Children’s Playgrounds

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the provision of children's playgrounds.

Looking at the weather outside, I am sure hon. Members will have noticed that spring has now arrived, or is at least a little closer. Parents across the country are now hoping that they can finally get their children outdoors to run around and go to parks with friends, and to burn off some energy on the weekends and in the fantastic lighter evenings, in their local playgrounds, which is the topic of this debate. I am very grateful to have the opportunity to talk about this subject today.

Times are quite tough, as we know, and resources are squeezed. I want to raise in the debate today the pressures on the availability of local outdoor spaces and playground areas, which are declining at an alarming rate.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

On that point, I want to raise the issue of the playground near Strand Street School in the East Marsh area of my constituency. It has fallen into significant disrepair, and a group of local mums, the East Marsh mums, is now pulling together and trying to raise the funds to establish a brand new playground. Seeking those funds is incredibly difficult; they are looking to lots of different community funding pots to try to raise that money. It will take a significant amount of money. Does my hon. Friend agree that the loss of the playground is an enormous loss to the children of the East Marsh area?

[Mr Leslie]

Yes. I know that my hon. Friend is a real campaigner for grassroots neighbourhood issues, and she will know the programme in question more than I do. I will come on to talk about what parents can do when faced with the retreat of the traditions of municipal provision, when they have little choice but to somehow find a voluntary alternative. It is very difficult and resources are quite scarce.

[Mr Leslie]

Indeed I am. One of the great things that we are all very nostalgic about from our own childhoods is communal open spaces, and facilities that are largely taken for granted and rarely discussed. Not just children gain enormously from the opportunity for outdoor exercise and socialisation; new parents get to meet other parents, and playgrounds help reduce isolation. They build new friendship networks for new mums and dads. It is a great watering hole for people to come together, meet and form new bonds in the community, particularly at a big life-changing moment.

Playgrounds are a great British tradition, mostly developed in the 20th century. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Charles Wicksteed’s playground equipment company near Kettering. When I mentioned to my eight-year-old daughter that I was leading this debate today, she encouraged me to call for more bars, because she is such a gymnastics enthusiastic who would go round and round on them all day long if she could, but playgrounds are also about sandboxes, swings, slides, climbing frames and roundabouts, and there are many other fantastic municipal facilities with even more exciting innovations—trampolines, paddling pools and all sorts of fantastic amenities.

[Melanie Onn]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate North East Lincolnshire’s Labour council on introducing a parkour facility at the Duke of York playground area, which introduced playgrounds to a whole new generation of young people? Unfortunately, we have seen that falling into disrepair, even though it was brought in only about four years ago. It was a really exciting initiative and my ten-year-old son absolutely loves playing there.

[Mr Leslie]

There are different fashions and trends in play, particularly in the younger teenage years. Skateboard parks were a particular thing a decade ago and trends change. In Nottingham, in my constituency, a new play area has just been installed in Shipstone Street, and Nottingham is trying its best to roll out more facilities. It has improved 75 play areas, with three more set for improvement works shortly, and the city has 54 Green Flag Awards, the greatest number in the country.

Resources are still an underlying problem. Since 2009, Nottingham has had to cut its parks and open spaces budget by £3 million, with a further £300,000 to be cut in the next financial year. Like a lot of local authorities, it has had to start looking elsewhere to plug that gap, looking for grants from other charities and funding bodies over the past 10 years. That is a story repeated across the country. For example, Knowsley Borough Council has had to make a decision to sell off some parks and green spaces, which is a real shame, as childhood obesity levels are very high in that part of the world. Other local authorities are being forced into similar choices—half of the councils in north-west England, according to a BBC report, are considering selling off parks or finding other organisations to maintain them over the next three years.

Nationally, we are just not replacing playgrounds at the same rate as they are disappearing. Some 92% of park managers report cuts to their budgets over the last three years, and research undertaken by the Association of Play Industries has uncovered a sharp decline in playgrounds across England: 214 playgrounds have been closed, with a further 234 playgrounds earmarked for closure by local authorities. That is 448 playgrounds closed or closing, which is an alarming downward trend in play provision. There is no longer dedicated funding for playgrounds from central Government, or grants from the third sector, so playground provision falls to local authorities, whose budgets are of course squeezed.

Play really does matter and it is worth underlining what to many of us might seem obvious. Playgrounds are one of the best ways of encouraging children to do physical activity. Childhood obesity is at epidemic levels. More than one fifth of reception children are overweight or obese; by year 6 that rises to over a third. Children living in deprived areas are more than twice as likely to be obese than those in more affluent areas. For many children, playgrounds represent the only chance to play outdoors. Children living within 1 km of a playground are five times more likely to be of a healthy weight than children who are not near a playground.

Play is fundamental to the wider wellbeing of children. If play is restricted, that is likely to have a profound effect on physical and mental health, now and into the future. There is a crisis in children’s mental health, with some reports saying that as many as 20% of children have some degree of mental illness and that problem might be rising. Without adequate access to play, children cannot develop the important emotional skills needed to protect them from anxiety and depression. Research from the charity Fields in Trust shows, for the first time at national level, a direct and statistically significant link between the availability of public parks and green spaces and health and wellbeing.

That is why I called this debate today. We must not take playgrounds and play facilities for granted. We have to talk about them. This is an area of policy that could fall between the gaps. It was difficult even to decide whether I should target this debate at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Education, or the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, so this is not owned as much as it should be.

I have four requests of the Minister, and I will be as specific as I can. The first is about resources. I do not like to bang on about money constantly because I know the situation is tight, but we should invest to save. Investing a pound in good play facilities now will yield better returns and savings for the health service and the education system in the long run. We cannot rely on developers’ section 106 contributions for new play facilities. They make a bit of a difference, but only in areas in which development is taking place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I would be delighted to congratulate my hon. Friend’s council. That is an example of communities working with their local authority, despite the difficult overall climate, to find creative solutions that will benefit the community. There are examples of that happening all over the country. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that example, and I congratulate all those involved in that positive outcome.

On resources for the sector overall, the recent local government finance settlement ensures that the sector will have £45.6 billion in the next financial year, rising from £44.3 billion in the financial year we are just finishing. Nottingham will have more than £500 million in core spending power over that spending review period, the last two years of which we are about to enter, and it will be for the council—whether in Nottingham or elsewhere—to decide how best to prioritise its resources among all the competing claims.

The settlement is the third year of a four-year deal, as I mentioned, and it was accepted by 97% of councils, including that of the hon. Member for Nottingham East. I am glad that they have benefited from the certainty and stability brought by knowledge of income over the medium term. That is something that local authorities have asked for. It allows them to think strategically. Indeed, in the hon. Gentleman’s area the Nottingham Open Space Forum, of which I know he is aware, is one such example of that longer term strategic thinking, and it highlights the point that local areas are best placed to decide how to use resources to promote the causes that their constituents care most about.

[Melanie Onn]

Is the Minister aware of the inquiry by the previous Communities and Local Government Committee, which I was part of? The public response in that inquiry was overwhelming—one of the biggest the Committee received for any inquiry it had undertaken. Is that a sign that parks should be much higher up the Government’s agenda?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank the hon. Lady for her work on that Committee. I read that report when I first got this job a few weeks ago. It was a very good report, and I hope that she is pleased to see that the Government responded very positively to its recommendations, through my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones). I shall come on to those shortly, especially with regard to the parks action group and how we take forward the work recommended in the report.

The hon. Member for Nottingham East spoke a lot about children’s needs, and he is absolutely right to do so. There is more to do on tackling rising obesity levels and mental illness among our young people, but I am pleased that a great deal of activity is going on across Government in this area. We all want our children to be healthy and active, no matter their background, which is why it is important that we focus as a priority on what is happening in schools.

Having spoken to colleagues in the Department for Education, I am delighted to tell the Chamber that funding for the primary school PE and sport premium has doubled to £320 million a year from 2017. That will be a huge help in enabling schools to drive further improvements to sport provision. Furthermore, an extra £100 million has been promised to schools through the healthy pupils capital fund, which is a one-off fund provided from the soft drinks industry levy. That money will go to improving playgrounds and sports facilities across the school estate. Last week the Department for Education also announced the allocation of almost £1.5 billion in the forthcoming financial year to maintain and improve the condition of the education estate, including outdoor spaces.

As the hon. Gentleman noted, however, this is about much more than just funding. By making physical education a compulsory subject at all four key stages in the new national curriculum, the Government are helping to prioritise exercise and wellbeing. The positive experience of sport at a young age can create a lifelong habit of participation. It is important to foster that in young children. It is also important for our children to have role models whom they can look up to and who can inspire them to get fit and keep active. Darcy Bussell has spoken about that recently, and my constituent Sir Ian Botham has been a long-time advocate of children’s exercise, health and fitness.

The hon. Gentleman made the important point that there should be a voice for the parks and green spaces sector, a dedicated national voice to champion and advocate for it. He is aware of the parks action group established by my predecessor last year, and I would like to think that it is exactly that voice that the hon. Gentleman has called for. One of the points that I will take away from today is that we might need to shout a little louder about the important work of the parks action group. As the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) knows, that is one of the Select Committee recommendations that the Government acted on swiftly.

The action group draws on the expertise of a range of partners from the parks sector and a range of Departments. I will list some of those involved: the Association for Public Service Excellence, the Parks Alliance, Fields in Trust, the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces, Keep Britain Tidy, Natural England, Groundwork, the National Trust, the Heritage Lottery Fund and bodies representing local and parish councils. I list them because I am especially pleased that such a wide range of organisations have committed their time and energy to work in partnership with the Government to raise the profile of the parks agenda.

I say to hon. Members present that I do not intend for the parks action group just to be a talking shop. It aims not only to take forward the recommendations of the Communities and Local Government Committee report from last year but to deal with wider issues facing the parks sector. The members represent the views of the local communities with whom they work and, through their contribution, we will ensure that all the issues that have surfaced today and many others are properly raised, represented and actioned.

The group will in the first instance identify effective and deliverable activities that can be undertaken to secure a better future for our green spaces for generations to come. It will focus on six immediate priorities for parks: standards, funding, vision and value of parks, empowering communities, knowledge and skills, and increasing usage. Those priorities pick up a number of the very pertinent points made by the hon. Gentleman.

[Rishi Sunak]

I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman that reassurance. I was about to come on to that, but he is right to raise it. I will ensure that a transcript of the debate, including his particular point about playgrounds and play, is given to all the members of the parks action group so that that is uppermost in their minds as they develop their work.

The action group will also explore how to improve equality of access across all ages and social groups. We all recognise that parks can play an important role in strengthening community cohesion, combating loneliness —my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) made an important point there—and promoting integration between diverse groups. The hon. Member for Nottingham East made reference to the integrated communities strategy published last week, and that highlights how the use of shared areas, especially by young people, helps to bring communities and neighbourhoods together. As a Department, we will welcome views on the proposals in that Green Paper and we will engage with individuals, communities, businesses and faith groups to help deliver those specific proposals.

With regard to loneliness, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley, I am a member of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, which was set up in memory of Jo. The Prime Minister has championed this as a priority for her—there was a meeting only last week, in which we talked about the value of green spaces in combatting loneliness and about ensuring that open spaces feature heavily in the commission’s strategy.

The parks action group will also consider the various funding models that exist to support parks and green spaces, and it will share that information with the sector to support future sustainability. There are examples of innovation, particularly up in Newcastle and the north-east, which I am keen to visit reasonably soon to explore what is being done. I look forward to presenting an update to Parliament on the progress of the parks action group in due course. I encourage all Members to support its work.

[Melanie Onn]

When is the strategy group due to produce a report? I wonder how the parents of the Sixhills area of Great Grimsby will feel about the outcomes of that and how quickly they will start to see the results in their play area.

[Rishi Sunak]

The parks action group has met recently, this year, and I am due to attend the next meeting. I cannot give the hon. Lady a specific timeline, but the Government have committed to report regularly to Parliament with updates. I hope we will give an update before the summer recess, but I have not yet had my first meeting so I am loth to make a firm commitment until I know about the work streams and plans of the action group. The Government have funded the group with £500,000, which I hope will leverage in extra funding from the various partners involved to promote the agenda that the group is keen to embrace.

The hon. Member for Nottingham East made another point about social deprivation. He is aware of the pocket parks programme, which the Department has run in the past, where £1 million helped in cases such as the one the hon. Member for Great Grimsby mentioned. The programme helped to fund 87 small green spaces, including two in the constituency of the hon. Member for Nottingham East, such as Frinton pocket park. That was a fantastic programme and I am looking to see what lessons we can learn from it, such as whether there is the possibility of replicating something similar in the future. It was brilliant at targeting money on areas with high social deprivation, removing those barriers to access.

I am conscious of time, but I hope that in the debate I have been able to demonstrate to the Chamber that the Government—not least me—are taking the subject seriously. With the parks action group, work is happening. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to put the issues front and forward on the agenda. I look forward to working with him and other Members to develop the green spaces that we all want our children to enjoy, not just today but for years to come.

Question put and agreed to.

Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [Lords]

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to colleagues in the other place for their work on this Bill, particularly my party colleagues Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Lord Kennedy of Southwark, who tabled amendments that helped to bring a Bill to this place that is fit for purpose.

The Bill arises from a legislative error in the Housing and Planning Act 2016. During the passage of the Bill that became that Act, the Conservative Government succumbed to Labour pressure on the issue of secure tenancies for victims of domestic abuse by offering assurances that the legislation would provide a guarantee that victims of domestic abuse would be granted an old-style secure tenancy, if they had one in their old residence.

[Catherine West]

Does my hon. Friend agree that since 2010 the situation for women and others escaping violent situations in the home has become much tougher due to a variety of factors, including the high cost of privately rented homes, the inaccessibility of social homes, the lack of resources for the police and the courts to deal with matters quickly, and cuts to legal aid? There has been a cocktail of difficulties facing women and others escaping violence.

[Melanie Onn]

My hon. Friend makes the important point that it is not a single issue but a variety of factors that has culminated in a very difficult situation for women and domestic abuse victims, who are in incredibly vulnerable positions.

Despite the intentions for the 2016 Act, it became clear that they had not been implemented. Ministers have acted quickly to rectify that situation by bringing this Bill to the House. I am pleased that the Bill is before us today and that dealing with the matter was not delayed until the introduction of the domestic violence and abuse Bill, as this is a matter of critical importance.

Housing insecurity has a massive effect on women’s ability to leave abusive relationships and to start rebuilding their lives after managing to leave. A Women’s Aid study showed that 63% of women in its refuges had spent over two years in their abusive relationship, with 17% spending over 10 years in it. Women’s Aid also says that housing concerns are a major barrier for many women who are trying to escape domestic abuse, and that housing insecurity interferes with the processes that enable them to begin undoing the harms of domestic violence. The reality is that far too many women are put in a position where their only choice is between staying in an abusive relationship and ending up in a temporary accommodation system that is increasingly unfit for purpose. That is truly horrific.

Many women in abusive relationships also have children and other dependants whom they must consider when making their dreadful choice. That is why this Bill is so important. By providing security of tenure to those who previously held old-style secure tenancies, the Bill will remove a key barrier that prevents victims of domestic violence from leaving an abusive relationship and rebuilding their lives.

The Bill helps only a fraction of victims of domestic violence, however, and in one way. Such victims are the people who are forced out of their properties, abandoning friendships, communities, their children’s schools and other family members. Rarely in our justice system do we see the perpetrator rather than the victim being forced to give up so much of their life. It is not right that victims of domestic violence should be forced to do just that in such a sudden and immediate way. They often have to leave with little notice and have no opportunity to plan or secure future housing, schooling and many other needs. I am pleased to see that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), in the Chamber to hear this. These issues cannot be solved without joint enterprise between Government Departments, and I am pleased that she is here to listen to the debate.

It is welcome that the Bill offers a secure tenancy to victims, but many will simply be unable to go through the process of moving into such a tenancy straight from their previous one. Many victims of domestic abuse will leave their abusive relationships with very few possessions and nowhere to go. This is why we need a fit-for-purpose refuge system to provide a safe haven for those with nowhere to go. Unfortunately, the current system is simply failing women across the country. Just this Friday, victims of domestic violence from Birmingham were offered accommodation in Burton and Milton Keynes, and even as far away as Manchester. Birmingham is not a small town experiencing a spike in referrals. It is a city of 2.5 million people that is sending victims 86 miles away because it does not have the capacity to accommodate vulnerable people.

Sadly, that fits into the national crisis under this Government. One fifth of specialist women’s refuges have shut down under the Conservatives, and 60% of all referrals to refuges were declined in 2016-17 due to a lack of space. Furthermore, 95% of refuge managers have reported turning away victims with complex mental health needs, with physical impairments or with a large number of children over a six-month period because they simply did not have the means to accommodate and care for them. On a typical day, 155 women and 103 children are turned away from refuges. This national crisis needs urgent attention, but instead the Government are pressing ahead with their catastrophic reforms to supported housing funding that threaten the future of refuges as we know them. Charities such as Women’s Aid, St Mungo’s, Shelter and the Salvation Army all highlighted their concerns to the Government during the consultation period, and serious questions remain about the effect of the Government’s proposals on refuges.

The reality for the funding of refuges is that, following an oversight—if I am going to be generous—by the Government, supported housing, including refuges, was included in the local housing allowance caps. A review into the funding of supported housing ended on 23 January, but the Minister has said today that there will be yet another extension, review and consultation, specifically with regard to refuge. It seems to me that when refuges are asking for security and reassurance for the sector when it comes to funding, another review will not help.

[Mrs Wheeler]

To set the record straight, it is not a review. It is an audit, and we have been asked by those in the business to do this.

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the Minister for that comment. I genuinely believe that this has been asked for as a result of the lack of clarity that came out of the Government’s review that ended on 23 January. The sector needs security and reassurance about its funding if it is to extend its provision and support the people who, as the Minister has rightly acknowledged, deserve all the support that the Government can afford to provide.

How can councils measure local demand when two thirds of victims of domestic abuse come from outside their local authority area? Are the Government finally ready to offer assurances to providers of refuges, and to guarantee that funding will be ring-fenced for 2021 and beyond and that the £500 million set aside by the Treasury for 2021-22 has been assigned to supported housing? According to Women’s Aid, more than half of refuges will have to close their service entirely or reduce the number of spaces available if these reforms go through as proposed. Will the Government therefore use the end of the consultation period on 23 January to finally listen to the experts in this field and to reconsider their reforms?

One thing that the Government must do to remove some of the pressure on short-term supported housing providers is ensure that victims and their families are rehoused in their secure tenancies as soon as possible. However, social rent capacity—whether provided by councils or by housing associations—is in crisis. New social housing is desperately needed, but the Government funded fewer than 1,000 new homes last year. In 2010, Labour left the Government a legacy of 40,000 new social rental houses a year, because we knew that having readily available social housing stock around the country is critical for so many people, including domestic violence victims. The Conservatives have taken a wrecking ball to that legacy, with fewer than 1,000 social rental homes being built in the past year, a number dwarfed by the 13,500 social homes that were sold off under the Government’s right-to-buy scheme.

That perhaps explains the Government’s rationale behind the Housing and Planning Act 2016. Rather than allowing councils to offer a secure, stable home to those who need it and building a sustainable amount of social housing, the Government decided to rip the heart out of social housing by making social tenancies more insecure. I note that the Government have not published plans to go ahead with the change agreed in the 2016 Act, and I wonder whether they have seen sense and have reconsidered the changes that they proposed in 2016. If not, perhaps they will tell us today when they plan to implement the changes.

The Government must solve the myriad problems with provision for domestic abuse victims as soon as possible. The Bill before the House today represents a small step in the right direction, and we will support it, but this legislation should have been enshrined in the 2016 Act. As such, Labour will be particularly hawkish in ensuring that the Bill carries out its intended purposes and lives up to the guarantees that the Government gave in the other place. The Bill must ensure that the many women who move local authority area after being victims of domestic abuse can transfer the right to a secure tenancy to their new local authority. The Government guaranteed that after an amendment tabled by my colleague Baroness Lister, as the Minister recognised.

Victims of domestic abuse need support after leaving an abusive relationship, and knowing that a safe pathway out of an abusive relationship exists will ease many of the worries that prevent the ending of an abusive relationship. Much more needs to be done to make that a reality. I hope that the forthcoming domestic violence and abuse Bill does much to improve provision, but we are happy to support this Bill’s Second Reading.

Homelessness

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) on securing this really important debate. It is incredibly important, as has been brought home to us this week, more than most others, because of the terrible weather we are having.

We all know that visible forms of homelessness have increased. We cannot walk around any town or city centre without seeing people bedding down for the night in doorways and makeshift shelters. In fact, when I walked down St Matthew Street in London this morning, I passed two rough sleepers who had all their belongings in a doorway. Given that I had been talking about affordable housing at an agency that is coming up with housing policies, I thought how perverse it was then to be walking past people sleeping rough in the street.

We know that on any given night last year about 4,500 people were sleeping rough on the streets of England—a 170% rise since 2010. I say “about 4,500” because we still do not have any method of accurately recording the numbers of people sleeping rough on our streets up and down the country. Until we get such a method, we cannot accurately address the scale of this problem.

As has already been said, the fact that people are dying on the streets of Britain in 2018 is entirely unacceptable. On Friday morning, however, a man named Rob O’Connor was found dead in Chelmsford, as temperatures dipped below freezing, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) mentioned, just the other week a man died outside Westminster tube station. In this bitterly cold weather, most of us are able to wrap up warm and return to our houses, but rough sleepers do not have the most basic options. It is absolutely clear that we must find genuine solutions to this 21st-century scandal.

There are now over 120,000 children living in temporary accommodation. The four-year freeze of the local housing allowance that started in 2016 has, according to Shelter’s research, the potential to put over 1 million households at risk of homelessness by 2020, so are the Government seriously planning against all eventualities that may arise? As was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) and, very eloquently, by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), the supplementary estimates have revealed that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has surrendered £72 million of funding for affordable homes. That money could have built 1,000 social rented homes.

There are a range of reasons why people become homeless. The most common are a breakdown of relationships with family, friends or spouse; mental or physical health problems, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) said; alcohol and drug addiction; and being unable to find anywhere to live on leaving care, hospital, prison and the armed forces. The Harbour Place homelessness charity has been operating the SWEP—severe weather emergency protocol—process every night since 28 January in my constituency. It tells me that many of its service users say they became homeless after having their benefits sanctioned or withdrawn. That issue was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Fiona Onasanya).

The assessment that there is a clear link between welfare cuts and homelessness is supported by the National Audit Office. It has said:

“The ending of private sector tenancies has overtaken all other causes to become the biggest single driver of statutory homelessness in England.”

The number of households made homeless by the ending of an assured shorthold tenancy trebled between 2009-10 and 2016-17—from 11% to 32%.

Labour has a plan to solve the scourge of homelessness. We would make 8,000 homes available for those with a history of rough sleeping. We would increase security for private renters with new three-year tenancies and controls on rent. We would have a Prime Minister-led taskforce on ending rough sleeping and tackling homelessness, and we would build thousands more affordable homes to rent.

We have got a plan, but what have the Government given us? They inherited from the previous Labour Government a trend of falling homelessness, with what was described by the independent Crisis and Joseph Rowntree Foundation homelessness monitor as an

“unprecedented decline in statutory homelessness”.

They have squandered that, with a 48% increase in the number of statutory homeless households; a 59% increase in the number of households in temporary accommodation, such as bed and breakfasts, hostels and refuges; and—at under 1,000 last year, compared with nearly 40,000 in 2009-10—a record low number of Government-funded homes for social rent.

I would like to use the few moments remaining to me to ask the Minister a few questions. First, how can the Government say that they are tackling the housing crisis when they have handed back £742 million to the Treasury—all related to housing schemes? Why has that not been spent? Why was it allocated in the first place? As has been highlighted, £560 million of that was for private ownership schemes; does that really address the issue of homelessness?

I have made a list. Rough sleeping, as my hon. Friends the Members for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) and for Birmingham, Edgbaston both highlighted, was reduced significantly under the Labour Government. On temporary accommodation, my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) talked about the excellent work being undertaken in Wales by the Labour-led Government under Carwyn Jones. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) talked about the issues of funding for supported accommodation. Other issues include Housing First; public health; mental health; social housing; affordable housing; healthcare and the life expectancy of people living on the streets; minority group issues, particularly LGBT support run by charities such as the Albert Kennedy Trust; housing benefit, with about £10 billion of housing benefit going directly into the private sector and not being invested in social housing; skills in the building industry—

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Melanie Onn]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not put his name down to speak at the appropriate time, but he should plan his time better.

My list also includes the number of planners in local government, property as a commodity rather than a home in the community and empty homes. All these issues have been raised by Members across the House, and it strikes me that much more should be done cross-departmentally between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions. Are there any plans to undertake cross-departmental work to address the issue in the round? Is the Minister satisfied that local government has been provided with sufficient resources properly and fully to deliver the Homelessness Reduction Act? Finally, if she is so committed to the homelessness agenda why has the homelessness reduction taskforce not yet met?

Oral Answers to Questions

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I hope that the hon. Lady agrees that it makes sense to pilot Housing First properly so that we ensure that when it can be rolled out across the country, it will work properly. That is why we have set up the pilot areas. There are still lots of types of help in other parts of the country, much of which comes from the £1 billion of funding that we have allocated to 2020, which includes funding for local authorities such as York.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The December report of the local government and social care ombudsman, “Still No Place Like Home”, found that in seven out of 10 of the housing cases that it investigated, families were being placed in bed and breakfast accommodation for unlawfully lengthy periods, with some lasting more than two years. The report highlights the appalling physical and mental impact, including on children, of living in inadequate, crowded and sometimes damp conditions. Does the Secretary of State recognise just how damaging living in insecure, inappropriate housing is? Will we see any improvement for those families in the next 12 months?

[Sajid Javid]

I share the concerns of many hon. Members, which is why the Government have made fighting homelessness and reducing rough sleeping an absolute priority. The hon. Lady’s question recognises that action is required on many fronts—economic, mental health, addiction and other issues—and the Government have put together a programme to pursue them.

Supported Housing

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I join others in the House in welcoming the Minister to her place. I look forward to working with her in the future. I also add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who is not in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing the debate on the excellent joint Select Committee report. I am sure it will be referenced for some time to come.

I suspect that it will not come as a surprise to some in the room to hear that I think the report is excellent, given that I was a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee. In that vein, I extend my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place, who steered that Committee through some intensive evidence gathering sessions with their excellent chairing skills. They made possible a thorough report that enabled those different organisations and Members of Parliament to challenge this policy and have some great effect.

I also remember the work of the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) in this area. It became apparent towards the end of last year, when he held a very short debate in the House, just how much concern about and affection for supported accommodation there is across the House. There was barely a seat available for people to listen to his eloquent words. It was profound, and it certainly made clear to Ministers the strength of feeling across the House on this matter.

The joint Committee report, alongside the repeated calls from the Opposition in Opposition day debates and the resolution of the House, resulted in a welcome acknowledgment by the Government that including supported housing in the LHA rate cap was wrong and in a climbdown by the Prime Minister. However, the resulting review of the funding model has left things less than straightforward—that is quite a generous description of the situation.

It has been striking to hear the similarities between the issues raised by hon. Members and the collective approach taken by providers of supported accommodation. They have been determined to speak with one voice and ensure that they are heard collectively, so that the Minister understands that some very clear flaws need addressing. Doing so will hopefully reduce her considerable burden of additional responsibilities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) was right to highlight all the other services that are available within supported accommodation. This is not about a roof over people’s heads. It is about the accommodation, but it is also about the support. We should remember that in every decision we make.

The Government plan to split their supported housing funding into three models, based on sheltered, short-term and long-term needs, and move the responsibility for funding of short-term supported housing from the main welfare system to local authorities. The Government have said that that is about providing long-term sustainable funding mechanisms that ensure quality. However, I do not think that the Government’s response goes anywhere near achieving those aims. In fact, as it stands, the proposal will lead to more insecurity for many around the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) explained clearly.

Despite repeated attempts, before the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler) took her place as Minister, to entice Housing Ministers into confirming the details of future funding, there has been no movement beyond the 2020-21 commitment, but we know that the Treasury has set aside around £500 million for 2021-22. Perhaps the Minister will be rather less coy than her predecessors and end this cloaked performance, so that we can give clarity not only to the sector that provides these vital supported services but to the people who use them.

It has to be recognised that living in supported housing is not a choice. People go into supported housing out of necessity, because they have no other options available to them. I urge the Minister to be clear today and tell those people that there will be no cut in funding in the second year and no cut in funding in subsequent years. To fail again to provide certainty to this sector will only add to the delays in investment that the joint Committee report has shown are already happening.

The long-term impact of the delays will most likely be that the standards of accommodation will be lower, as the costs outstrip the benefits of ever-increasing and more demanding maintenance, and that fewer places will be available because new, more suitable accommodation will not be built. The Minister will be well aware from the contributions today that significant concerns remain about the moving of funding away from the welfare system to local authorities, meaning that funding will no longer be needs-led and no longer based on the right to help with housing costs for individuals. Nobody wants to see further financial risk burdens given to local authorities, which are already hard-pressed.

As has been mentioned—particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), who has been a champion of this issue—charities such as Women’s Aid have raised concerns that these reforms are incompatible with the way the national network of refuges operates around the country. As many Members have said, two thirds of women travel outside their local authority boundaries to seek refuge care. Indeed, on my last visit to my local refuge just before Christmas—it is run by the excellent Denise Farman, who works tirelessly for the women who seek her assistance there—I met women from right across the Yorkshire and Humber region. I know that previously they have come from much further afield as well. Funding based on local need simply does not make sense. The Government must commit to work with refuge providers to redesign a funding model that represents the reality of refuges.

The definition of short-term accommodation as being for up to two years, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) mentioned before he had to leave, causes serious problems for the sector. The charity Rethink Mental Illness has said that these new funding levels will make mental health supported housing more insecure and result in fewer new supported housing services and more scale-backs or closures of current supported housing. Many of the cases that it deals with will now be classed as short term. Indeed, 50% of its supported housing services will now be classed as short term and subject to the new funding model.

We have to remember that the people in this accommodation have a range of conditions, with differences in severity and longevity and therefore very different timelines for moving out of supported housing. Does the Minister recognise the additional anxiety and stress that will be caused by adding this new ticking clock if those people are placed in what the Government term short-term accommodation? The Government must give serious thought to the views of groups such as Rethink Mental Illness and cutting the length of time that is considered short term. Let us accept that “short-term” is genuinely short. There seems to be a consensus across the House and throughout the supported accommodation sector that it takes 12 weeks to deal with emergency supported housing need, as well as universal credit and access to housing benefit.

Part of the logic in making these changes is the incompatibility of universal credit with extremely short-term supported housing. Surely if the aim of universal credit is to encourage claimants to be independent by allowing them to manage their own housing costs, this proposal for short-term supported housing goes against the very principle of universal credit. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East made that point far more clearly than I just managed to.

Groups such as Riverside, the YMCA, St Mungo’s and the Salvation Army—the Salvation Army rarely comes out against any Government to suggest that things are not going well—have all said that managing housing costs in a supportive environment is a vital step in the transition to independent living for those in short-term supported housing, so removing this independence could lead to longer stays in supported housing. Rather than creating a new, complicated and crudely structured system, surely the Government should look at how the universal credit system could be improved for those in short-term supported housing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned the lack of move-on accommodation for people who wish to leave short-term supported accommodation. She is absolutely right about that. I was interested to learn about the additional £50 million allocated for homelessness outside of London. It is obvious to everybody that there is an increase in visible homelessness and rough sleeping outside of London. Where is the funding that was earmarked for that? When will it be allocated?

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) for raising the issue of tenancy security. If people are not to be treated as individuals or have any of the tenants’ rights that they may well have relied on previously, with the money going to the organisation instead, we add the pressure of a lack of housing security. That is not something we should be encouraging within the supported accommodation sector.

I have a few more questions, which are in line with some of the questions posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East. What happens if a service does not receive a grant? My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood referred to what might be considered less desirable accommodation—for ex-offenders, for example—which local authorities might not always be desperate to see more of in their area. Can the residents receive housing benefit? If a service has a grant for some but not all residents, can some still receive housing benefit? What will the Minister do to ensure that organisations that do not currently deal with local authorities and do not receive, for example, Supporting People funding do not fall through the gaps in the new system?

In a statement to the House in December, the then Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), said that he was

“confident that by working with the sector we can get this right.”—[Official Report, 21 December 2017; Vol. 633, c. 1317.]

But here we are, with significant representations from across the sector saying that this is not right. I urge the Government to recognise that the proposal is simply not working and quickly to develop a fit-for-purpose model that represents the reality of supported housing. The conclusion next week of the consultation gives the new Minister a perfect opportunity to take those necessary steps.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Wheeler]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady misunderstands me, because the long term will be ring-fenced with local authorities. The whole point about this is that we want to grow the supply of sheltered and supported housing accommodation, because the Government consider it very important in looking after the most vulnerable people in society in future. In the same vein, I reassure hon. Members that the amount of grant funding for this part of the sector to 2020 will continue to take account of the costs of provision, and growth of future provision.

Better oversight and value for money are an important part of our reforms. The Joint Committee was keen that there should be a set of national standards. We are consulting on a national statement of expectation, which will set out what we want good supported housing to look like.

We will work with local government on how it plans future provision in England as it assesses current and future need. Before implementation, we will issue more detailed guidance, to support local authorities in monitoring this provision in their area. We are carrying out a full new burdens assessment to identify how much additional administrative budget local authorities will need to deliver the new funding approach. We are working closely with local authorities and the Local Government Association to do that.

Under the short-term model, all funded provision will be commissioned by the local authority. This means providers will need to meet local authority quality standards. Furthermore, under the new model for sheltered and extra care, the social housing regulator will monitor compliance with this new system. We are empowering tenants by obliging providers to publish breakdowns of their service charges. Where tenants feel that these are unreasonable, they can take action. We also continue to work with the sector to identify ways to drive up standards, improve outcomes and share best practice.

I have mentioned a number of areas where our conclusions coincide with those of the Committee, but one recommendation on which we are not aligned is that on the creation of a bespoke model for refuges. We recognise how important that is, but we believe that a local approach will ensure the best outcome for domestic abuse services. This is because local authorities are best placed to understand their residents’ needs.

[Melanie Onn]

Does the Minister not accept the statistic, provided by Women’s Aid, that two thirds of women come from outside their local authority area?

[Mrs Wheeler]

From my experience, I know that many people move around and prefer to go to a refuge that is not next door. There is then a knock-on effect: that local authority takes on local housing, unless they later find somewhere else that the person in the refuge wants to go to. The effect of this is that all the way around the country, local authorities take their fair share, and they know that and work on that basis.

Yorkshire Devolution

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing this important debate. He spoke passionately on behalf of his constituents and set out what he believes is a potential solution to the current impasse with the South Yorkshire devolution deal. In fact, an hour or so before this debate, I received a letter from Barnsley and Doncaster councils that set out a proposed solution in a very similar form to his.

Before we talk about what can be done to unblock Yorkshire devolution—it is clear that there is a stalemate—it is important to point out that we are not starting from a green field. The negotiations on the South Yorkshire devolution deal started in 2015. The hon. Gentleman and many of his colleagues were in this House and had an opportunity to engage with their local authority and ask what devolution should look like in South Yorkshire. I accept that he would probably say that times have changed and that the poll with its massive 20% turnout—although the result was emphatic from that 20%—changes things.

I am grateful to get it on record that, as the hon. Gentleman correctly said, the Government set out a compromise solution before Christmas that could enable us to break the stalemate in South Yorkshire. The difference between his proposed solution and ours is that we believe that the best way to ensure that further devolution can take place anywhere else in Yorkshire is to fully implement the devolution deal for South Yorkshire first, including having an election. Back in 2015 and on two further occasions, the four South Yorkshire authorities came to Government and requested that that deal, together with the gain share, was legislated for in this House. It was voted through the House of Commons.

Given the poll in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, that might not be the ideal solution, but we would face certain challenges in relation to his proposed solution. First, it remains the law of the land that the election for the South Yorkshire Mayor will take place in May. The process for delaying the date of that election would be to ensure that all the councils in South Yorkshire agreed to the election being delayed. As of today, I am not aware that all of them have.

Secondly, the Government would need to agree to a new proposed date for the election. We would need to have a draft order prepared, cleared through the Government’s legal adviser and laid before Parliament. We would then need time to approve it through motions in the House of Commons and the House of Lords and time for the order to come into force. To do that between now and May, given the parliamentary business that we have, looks extremely tight. That is why I hope that all the authorities of South Yorkshire will give proper consideration to the proposed compromise solution that was set out by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government.

I want to set out the terms of that compromise on the record. It is proposed that the four South Yorkshire councils agree to do all that is necessary for the Sheffield city region deal to be implemented as soon as practicable after the mayoral election. That would require them to first undertake the consultation on the functions that should be devolved to the combined authority and to the Mayor and to give their consent to any order effecting that devolution.

The Government would then agree with Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield councils that if a “one Yorkshire” solution were to come forward or a deal were developed, and the Government and councils concerned were able to consent to it, the constituent parts of the existing South Yorkshire deal would be free to leave that deal at the end of the initial mayoral term, on the proviso that the transport arrangements covering South Yorkshire had been considered.

I understand from the hon. Member for Barnsley Central that that is not an ideal solution, but it may be a practical one. We have proposed the compromise to all the South Yorkshire authorities and it is ultimately for them, with the compelling result of the referendum in Barnsley and Doncaster in mind, to negotiate between themselves to see if a compromise can be reached. We have had a response from Barnsley, Doncaster and Sheffield; we have not yet had a response from Rotherham.

I make an open offer to the hon. Gentleman that I will work with him and his colleagues to see if such a compromise can be reached. I reiterate that the Government do not intend to undo the legislation of this House to change the date of the election for the South Yorkshire mayoral combined authority election, and even if we intended to do so, I do not believe that it would be possible in parliamentary terms to pass the necessary orders from where we are today.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It sounds as if the proposal that has been laid out by the Opposition has not found favour with the Minister as yet. I hope that that does not preclude any conversations that other authorities across the whole of Yorkshire may wish to have. Would he encourage local authorities to have such conversations—if they continue, which I hope they will—with other authorities in the whole of the Yorkshire and Humber region including northern Lincolnshire?

[Jake Berry]

I encourage conversations to continue across Yorkshire. One of the key point of the compromise proposed by the Government before Christmas to the four local authorities currently in the South Yorkshire deal was that it did not preclude in any way Yorkshire authorities coming together and discussing what a future Yorkshire devolution deal might look like.

Draft Housing and Planning Act 2016 (Banning Order Offences) Regulations 2017

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 General Committees

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

The legislation has been a long time coming, but I welcome the Government’s adoption of yet another Labour party initiative. It was the last Labour Government who first proposed protecting tenants with a national register of landlords. The coalition Government labelled the proposal burdensome red tape and bureaucracy, and ditched it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) revived the idea, promising to root out rogue landlords, but it was then dismissed by the Conservatives because it meant more spending, which is odd considering the Government’s own impact assessment two years later that put the cost at a maximum of £40 million a year.

During that period, we have seen hundreds of thousands more households pushed into the private sector. Rents have increased by an average of 16%, and there has been no protection from that kind of exploitation. The changes in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 fall well short of the tough action we have been advocating for years, but they are a step in the right direction. To protect tenants from rogue landlords, we must have in place penalties for breaching the law and ways of rooting out those whose past actions deem them unfit to be landlords. The Act was passed in May 2016, so why has it taken 20 long months to introduce this statutory instrument? It took almost 11 months from the close of the consultation for the Government to publish their response and introduce the regulations. The delay has unnecessarily allowed rogue landlords the freedom to continue operating, without housing authorities having easy recourse to the law to protect tenants.

The Government’s consultation response states that almost half of respondents suggested additional offences that should be considered banning order offences, some of which were not criminal offences and some of which were already covered in the Government’s proposals. However, some of the suggestions were not adopted in the legislation because they were deemed

“not sufficiently serious to warrant a banning order”.

Will the Minister give some examples of those suggestions, and if possible make available a full list of the suggestions in that category after this sitting? It is quite a subjective assertion, and we could do with some more detail.

The offences added to the list following the consultation—items 7 to 14 of the schedule to the regulations—will be considered banning order offences only when they have been committed against or in collusion with a tenant at a time when the offender is a landlord. Why has that qualifier been introduced for those offences? Although they are not housing-specific offences, is it not the case that they would still make a landlord or agent not a fit and proper person for the role, regardless of whether the victims were their own tenants?

On the matter of banning orders, will there be guidance for tribunals? What qualifies for the minimum 12-month banning order, and what extends to the presumably indefinite banning order that may well come about as a result of that process? Will the indefinite bannings be monitored, or will there be any monitoring of repeat-offender rogue landlords to establish the effectiveness of the legislation?

I notice that the Minister mentioned that if a banning order were to be implemented, tenants would not lose their rights and would remain in the property, and a local housing authority would take responsibility for the property. Who will the local housing authority be? Will it necessarily be a local authority, or could it be a housing association if the local authority no longer has responsibility for managing properties? We have been discussing the quality of properties and landlords who allow their properties to fall into disrepair. In order for tenants to be properly protected and live in properties kept to a decent standard, will it become the responsibility of the third party to make good the property, and who will foot the bill?

Also, it seems to me that for a banning order, the local housing authority might need to gather further evidence to meet the thresholds expected by the first-tier tribunal. Will additional funds be provided for the local housing authority to undertake that work? I am unclear how onerous it might turn out to be for the authorities, but if it becomes particularly onerous, there may be resource implications for them.

What estimate has the Minister made of the number of landlords currently operating who would be eligible for banning orders if the legislation were already in place? In other words, if the legislation is made, how many landlords does he expect will receive orders in the next year, two years or five years?

I also wish to make a point about enforcement, because the regulations are only as good as the levels of enforcement that will accompany them. If landlords are not policed, what is the value of the laws that supposedly govern them? The Government have stood in the way of local authorities such as Newham and Redbridge that are willing to use the licensing powers available to them to crack down on rogue landlords. Newham’s licence was, bizarrely, not renewed for the Queen Elizabeth Olympic park area, while Redbridge’s entire application was rejected. Newham has prosecuted more than 1,200 landlords who were illegally evicting tenants and providing substandard accommodation that, in many cases, failed to meet the most basic health and safety standards. It has recovered more than £3 million in unpaid council tax, and has banned almost 30 of the worst offenders. Why would the Government want to side with rogue landlords over exploited tenants?

Having said that, I accept that the regulations are absolutely better than the status quo, so we have no plans to oppose their progress.