City and Town Centres: Regeneration

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) on securing this debate.

I want to focus my remarks on empty shops. Mr Vickers, as my constituent you will be very familiar with some of the comments that I will make. This is not a new story; the decline of town centres has been overseen by a decade and a half of neglect without a national strategy to ensure that communities continue to have healthy, thriving high streets and town centres. It has fallen to local areas to undertake plans themselves—expending significant cost and time—to present plans to Government and then to gradually eke out funds, at sporadic intervals, to try to fulfil their local vision. That has happened in Grimsby and Cleethorpes. An endeavour under the banner of the Greater Grimsby town deal board and the commitment of local businesses brought about the establishment of the 2025 Group, whose members are working together to deliver the kinds of improvements that will make areas attractive and safe, to encourage the increased use of expanding town centre facilities.

I have long argued that town centres and high streets need to evolve to survive, but that requires intervention when the market fails. Initiatives such as the new Horizon Youth Zone on Garth Lane, the introduction of a community diagnostic centre—that is not without its issues but I am raising them separately with the Health Secretary—or the proposed new transport hub will all go towards making Grimsby town centre much more attractive.

We have some brilliant businesses in our town centres and on our high streets that all worked so hard through the pandemic to keep going in the face of rising bills. They have dug deep and kept their doors open. I went to the Great Big Small awards recently and I was pleased to see so many businesses celebrating and being celebrated for their contributions to the vibrancy of the offer across north-east Lincolnshire. Although I do not have time to mention them all—I really wanted to—I will say that Buzz Café has the best chips in the world. If any Member wants to come for Fish and Chips Friday, they are very welcome.

In Grimsby and Cleethorpes, we have loads of empty shops, whether we are on St Peter’s Avenue or the marketplace just behind. The plan is to pedestrianise the marketplace, and local businesses are really worried that that will affect footfall for them. Companies, particularly banks, are leaving big gaps that lie empty for extended periods of time. When they are filled—this is an issue that I have raised before—they are filled with vape shops and barbers and there is a real lack of a range of different options. I really support the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North about keeping the quality good, the appearance less gaudy, and the impression of the area at a high level so it is improved and is made more, not less, attractive.

Estate Adoption: North-east England

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Emma Foody (Cramlington and Killingworth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered estate adoption in the North East.

Thank you for the honour of serving under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I am grateful to have this opportunity to move the motion, which is of considerable importance to my constituency of Cramlington and Killingworth. It is a newly formed constituency, made up of new towns as well as a number of villages, covering the north of Newcastle, south-east Northumberland, and north and north-west North Tyneside. As it is on the edge of different local authorities, over the past 10 to 15 years, our villages and towns have grown with significant levels of development. These developments provide important and needed homes for our communities, but there have also been significant challenges for those communities, and adoption and delivery of infrastructure are key among those challenges.

With the commitment of the new Labour Government to deliver the homes that our country needs, we need to ensure that we are not only building homes, but sustainable communities, with buy-in from residents. Delivering timely and appropriate infrastructure is a key part of that, because a home is not just the property that we live in, but the street that we live on, and the community we are a part of. For too many of my constituents, there are unacceptable delays in the delivery of even the most basic infrastructure. Residents who have worked hard, saved, and bought their first home, their family home, or their dream home, are left without adequate road surfaces, pavements, street lighting, pedestrian crossings, and road markings. Too often, people are left in limbo—passed from one organisation to the next, with each one trying to pass the buck—paying management fees and council tax, yet not having the basics, such as completed pavements, roads or communal facilities. Residents are left frustrated and angry, with a lack of communication from those responsible, a lack of accountability, and no certainty on when their estates will be finished.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

The situation which my hon. Friend describes in her constituency is mirrored in mine; it is an issue that affects properties around the country. Locals in my constituency will know the old Birds Eye site. It was a brilliant idea to bring new housing into the town centre, on a brownfield site, but latterly it has been discovered that the estate is half-finished, the roads are unpassable, and the paths unusable. Does she agree that local authorities should be given additional powers and that there should be caps on the costs that local authorities are required to pay, to force developers to complete these estates so that people can live in their dream home?

[Emma Foody]

This is an experience that is shared around the country, and we need to look at all available options to we resolve this matter. We are not talking about months that residents are left in this situation, but years—five, 10, 15 years, in which families see their children grow up and leave home before a road is completed.

Before the debate, I asked my constituents for their testimonies and experiences of the range of issues that they face. David, who lives on the Fairways estate in the west of Cramlington speaks of roads and pavements on the estate that are largely without tarmac, which has made using bikes, wheelchairs, and pushchairs dangerous outside the home. He talks of how residents are cut off from other facilities such as shops, schools, and parks, because the necessary footpaths were not built for years. He says that only after constant pressure from residents did the developer build a footpath, which is unlit and poorly laid—it would be difficult to use a pushchair or a wheelchair on it—and it links one housing estate to another through a field. If people have a car, the roads are not much better. They are often unfinished, with is a higher risk of damaging vehicles. When the roads are icy, there is more risk of traffic accidents.

Another constituent, Iain, has been contacting the developer of Five Mile Park in Wideopen for three years regarding the road surface. The estate was constructed almost 10 years ago, and he has been given excuse after excuse about why work has been delayed on the roads, pavements and footpaths. The developer informed Iain that the road had been completed more than a year ago. However, poor-quality work by contractors means that it has not been brought up to adoptable standards. That is just one case of many in which a developer will claim to have completed roads, pavements or other infrastructure, but not up to a standard for the local authority to adopt them.

Renters’ Rights Bill

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but I disagree on how to resolve the issue. Rent controls restrict housing supply, which does not help anyone, but our Bill takes practical measures to help renters by empowering tenants to tackle unreasonable rent hikes and prohibiting unfair rental bidding, and we will continue to assess potential action on sky-high rents. Hopefully, we are taking measures that will help his constituents and others across the country.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Could my right hon. Friend clarify whether, under the Bill, landlords and letting agents will be prevented from requiring individuals who do not have all the correct supporting information to pay excessive deposits, which prohibit people from getting secure properties for their families?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point about deposits and paying rent in advance. This Bill will protect tenants from requests for large amounts of rent in advance, but we are in listening mode. We will keep this issue under review during the passage of the Bill, and we will take the necessary action. We think that we have done enough on that, but we are open to interventions, if people feel that they would help.

Unlike in the previous Government’s Bill, the tribunal will not be able to increase rent above what was originally proposed by the landlord. In cases of undue hardship, we will give the tribunal the power to defer rent increases by up to two months, thereby finally ending the injustice of economic evictions.

However, that is not all we will do to tackle unfair rent costs. We remain committed to ending rental bidding wars, which all too often price hard-working families out of a home. Landlords and letting agents will be required to publish an asking rent for their property, and will not be allowed to ask for, encourage or accept a higher offer. We are delivering real change for working people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 2nd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Pennycook]

The Government do not intend to require local planning authorities to amend neighbourhood plans in the future. Communities will continue to be able to choose whether they review or update their neighbourhood plan.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

Could the Minister expand on his earlier answer relating to devolution, and perhaps provide a timeframe for some of the discussions that are taking place with local authorities about devolution plans that did not go ahead before the last general election? My constituents are very keen to move ahead with improvements to transport, education and inward investment.

[Jim McMahon]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and for her work on the agenda to further devolution in her region. We recognise that in some parts of the country, including Hull and East Yorkshire and Greater Lincolnshire, local authorities worked up proposals for the previous Government that were not tabled before the election. We are currently working through those proposals at pace to make sure areas have clarity about where they are up to, and we look forward to reporting on that as soon as possible and meeting with local MPs as part of that process.

Deaths of Homeless People

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I regret every single life lost on our streets. It is heartbreaking that those 729 people died on our streets last year. That demonstrates the need as clearly as ever—there is so much more to do. I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and come to the all-party group to discuss this in much more detail.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The Minister is before us to convince us of the Government’s seriousness in taking forward this issue. Back in March, the UK Statistics Authority urged the Government to improve the quality of their homelessness figures, because if the Government do not know exactly how many people are homeless, how can they possibly expect to deal with the issue? What action have the Government taken on that advice?

Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill (First sitting)

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th June 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Q I am interested, Councillor Watts, in the comment you made in one of your earlier responses about the level of reserves that local authorities have had to retain, pending the outcome of appeals dating back—is it nine years?

Councillor Watts: To the 2010 revaluation, so from 2013 onwards.

[Melanie Onn]

Q That seems an extraordinarily long time for anyone to be waiting and holding finance that, as was rightly mentioned, should be being spent in local communities. Do you anticipate that the potential change from every five to every three years will improve that situation for local authorities, or make it harder for them?

On the financial position of local authorities and the level of reserves, are local authorities across the country fully prepared to deal with the potentially increased rate of appeals? The Minister has mentioned that he expects there to be fewer because the rates will be altered more regularly and there will not be such great changes.

Councillor Watts: We do not have a view on whether shifting the revaluations from five to three years will increase or reduce appeals—we will have to wait to see. What we need is some resourcing of the Valuation Office Agency and the valuation tribunal just to get through the very significant backlog from the 2010 revaluation. There is no structural fix to that; the Valuation Office Agency and the appeals tribunal just need to get through that backlog, quite a lot of which, it has to be said, is stuck in the courts at the moment. Therefore, it is not an easily soluble problem.

What we have not yet got, partially because it is early days in the check, challenge, appeal system, is any real sense of the number of appeals from the 2017 revaluation, and they could come through relatively late. That is one of the reasons we support a six-month deadline for businesses to lodge appeals, after the new valuations have been published, to give us some sense of the level of risk. But it could be that one of the impacts of the CCA system is that people are sitting on potential appeals, which will come through in due course, creating another layer of risk for businesses, and we will have to see about that.

As I understand it, the deadline for appeals on the 2017 revaluation has not yet been announced. We would hope that it was in line with the precedent, which would mean it would be the end of 2021, but we would welcome an early announcement on that to give us some sense of the scale of risk. It could well lead to more money having to be kept in reserves to manage a second or third round of risk around those appeals as well.

We would welcome the extra resources going in to clear the backlog. Whether more regular cycles lead to fewer appeals—I hope so, but we have no evidence to be able to comment on that either way.

[Melanie Onn]

Q Do you have any idea of how much is held nationally in reserves for this purpose? Did you mention that?

Councillor Watts: Yes, it is £2.5 billion.

Adrian Blaylock: It was £2.5 billion at the end of March 2017. If you look at the returns that local government is submitting to central Government in terms of their estimates, roughly £1 billion a year is being added to the appeals provision for loss for that particular year. Obviously, as appeals are heard and settled, some of that provision is released, but roughly £1 billion a year is set aside to settle appeals.

In answer to your question, do councils have enough reserves to pay for it? The way it works is that they will reduce their income from non-domestic rates; when they submit that return to central Government, they assume a level of loss and therefore that they will get less income. In effect, it creates its own provision—if that makes sense. That is where the reserve comes from.

[Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Q Do you foresee any problems with the roll-out of the business rate retention scheme and this Bill? Do you think any anomalies or complexities will emerge from those two?

Adrian Blaylock: Nothing obvious occurs. There are a lot of unknowns about rates retention—we are talking about whether we carry on with a similar model to what we use now, just with the 75%, or whether we go for the alternative model, which was favoured in the December consultation—and what local government needs is certainty of funding, and understanding of when and how the money will come. So I do not think that the Bill particularly causes any issues, but it would be nice to get some early indication of where we are going with rates retention and how that will change.

Councillor Watts: I do not think there are any in-principle reasons why the Bill creates problems for business rates retention.

Annie Gascoyne: I agree.

Domestic Abuse and Homelessness

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on securing this debate and on all the work that he does with the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which he leads ably, and presumably alone, now that his Conservative counterpart, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), has been promoted. I wish my hon. Friend well for the future of that all-party parliamentary group, which has done some incredibly important work and given Government clear direction on actions that they could take further to reduce homelessness and on additional steps beyond that which they have already done.

I wanted to participate in the debate because on Friday, at my regular weekly surgery, three cases of domestic abuse came to me. I wish that that was unusual, but sadly, it is not. I will focus on two of those cases, which have particular links to housing. I thought that the Government response to today’s debate might come from a Home Office Minister, rather than the Minister with responsibility for housing and homelessness, because of the nature of the domestic abuse involved. I trust that the Minister will have close conversations with her Home Office counterpart following the debate.

The first case that came before me involved a woman who had experienced severe financial coercive control at the hands of her former partner. After six years of a relationship—five years as a co-mortgager with the individual—the woman has been left with full responsibility for the mortgage and all the utility bills, as well as associated bills for which her former partner happily took her money for five years, but never actually payed the companies. Her ex-partner will not allow her to remove herself from or seek to close down that mortgage, or make any progress whatever on selling the property, so he retains his control over her life and her ability to move on from the relationship, although she is the one who engages with all the different agencies to try to work out a payment plan for all the debt accrued as a result of that relationship.

This woman has been to every organisation that she can think of, whether it be Women’s Aid, StepChange or her local authority, and has even taken advice from a solicitor on how to extricate herself from this situation. The only response is that she should default on her part of the mortgage payments, which would significantly affect her credit rating, and allow the property to be repossessed and sold by the bank at auction, at a much lower price than if it were sold on the open market. Both she and her partner would lose out, but her former partner could not care less about losing out—all he wants is to ensure that she struggles and that she cannot move any further along.

As an exercise in domestic abuse, such financial coercion is already legislated for, but the police simply do not seem to have the ability, focus and priorities to investigate such incredibly complex and sensitive situations, and the available avenues left to my constituents are few and far between. I hope that the Minister will meet the Home Office Minister, with whom I have already had a conversation about this particular case, to ensure that we see in the upcoming Domestic Abuse Bill a much greater focus on financial measures and packages, and on the institutions that can better support those in controlling relationships, particularly of a financial nature.

On homelessness, for that individual in that first case, getting either another mortgage or private rented accommodation will be very difficult and challenging with a poor credit rating.

The second case involves a woman who had been in a very violent relationship with her former partner, with whom she had four children. The partner was in a particular situation, and the police gave my constituent just 48 hours to get out of the family home and remove themselves as far away as possible.

The homelessness team put this woman and her four children into emergency bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but that was not entirely suitable. It was a long way from the children’s schools, which made it impossible for the mother to do any work because most of the day was spent taking four children back and forth to school on public transport. Her finances were certainly taken up by doing that, because she received no additional financial support in that situation. She then began sofa- surfing with her family, which has gone on for more than two years since they were advised to move on from that housing association property.

The homelessness team has now found my constituent a home, which she has been told is permanent, but after a matter of months the walls are crumbling, the roof and the bathroom leak, the whole house has electrical problems and electricians have assessed it as a tinderbox waiting to go up, and an outbuilding in the garden is so dangerous that the children cannot play out there, and one of them has already injured themselves in it. There is a crisis in the kind of property that local authorities can offer people in such dire situations. It would be great if the council or the housing association had sufficient properties, but when my constituent has asked the housing association to rehouse her in more suitable accommodation, she has been told that she made herself voluntarily homeless, and she has accrued debts as a result of non-payment of rent.

I cannot believe that Lincolnshire Housing Partnership, the housing association in question in this case, does not allow a waiver for individuals who have experienced domestic abuse to say that they are leaving a property, particularly when that is done under police advice. I cannot believe that the housing association cannot do more to ensure that people are properly accommodated.

Government have done some good work to prevent those who are suffering from domestic violence and seeking housing support from being turned away from neighbouring or external local authorities merely because they have no local connection. That is welcome. The Minister will know that I am very aware of the work undertaken to try to tackle rogue landlords and protect those in the private rental sector, but these two cases show that financial coercion as a crime is not fully investigated with the same vigour as other forms of physical abuse. The support is not available.

Much more could be done to get the institutions that offer mortgages to provide some breathing space and freeze mortgages until the situation is resolved to ensure that individuals are not punished. The partner of my constituent has gone to ground and constantly changes address so that the mortgage company cannot get hold of him and insist that he sign documentation. That is deeply frustrating for my constituent, because in her eyes she is the victim: she has done everything she can, having done all the right things and having gone to all the right agencies, yet still she will lose out.

The housing association procedures do not seem to reflect the reality of people’s lives. In those extraordinary circumstances, there must be some flexibilities in processes and procedures to make sure that people, particularly children, are not at a disadvantage. Council homelessness teams do not have sufficient good-quality properties to house people properly and rogue landlords are still getting away with offering poor-quality—and frankly, in this situation, dangerous—properties to incredibly vulnerable people. They are taking advantage: a local authority would be charged a much higher rate to house such people, who would feel they had no other choice. There are feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and failing as a parent, as well as the great impact of the disruption on the lives and education of my constituents’ children. That shows that the Government have a role to play to offer greater resources to close the many, very obvious gaps.

I would not feel so strongly about this issue if people coming to see me about it was not a weekly occurrence, but that is what it is, and they all experience similar housing situations. We have a great refuge service in Great Grimsby run by Women’s Aid, which caters for people across the country, but that is not a permanent home. When victims have done nothing wrong, being forced out of their home feels like further punishment.

I hope that in the Domestic Abuse Bill, as well as in the Minister’s remarks, there will be an acceptance that Government should prioritise victims remaining securely in their own homes, with the perpetrator being removed and prevented from interfering with their victims and the wider family. I wholeheartedly believe that it should not be the victims who lose their homes, communities, friends, family, social clubs, schools or jobs, and I hope the Minister shares my view.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I thank hon. Members from across the House for their considered speeches. I particularly congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) on securing the debate and on his tireless work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness. I am delighted that his health has recovered since last week, when he missed the launch of this interesting document.

This Government have made domestic abuse a key priority and we are committed to doing everything we can to end domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is a cross-Government issue, but I shall focus solely on the work of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Since 2014, our Department has invested £55.5 million in accommodation-based services, including refuges, to support victims of domestic abuse.

We have recently launched a consultation on future delivery of support to victims and their children in accommodation-based domestic abuse services, which ends on 2 August. The consultation complements wider Government work on tackling domestic abuse and supporting victims, including the new Domestic Abuse Bill. Proposals in the consultation include a new legal duty on local authorities to provide support for domestic abuse services for victims and their children. This will provide a range of services to support victims and their children in secure accommodation.

Local authorities will be required to work together across boundaries to ensure domestic abuse services reflect the needs of local people, including targeted, specialist support for black, Asian and minority ethnic survivors; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender survivors; and, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller survivors. We will work with local authorities adequately to fund the new duty. We estimate the early broad annual cost to be around £90 million per year. However, we want the full cost to be informed by the consultation and taken into the spending review.

I was asked questions about the domestic abuse commissioner.

[Melanie Onn]

Is the Minister planning to accept the amendment proposed in the report “A Safe Home”?

[Mrs Wheeler]

We want to be informed by the consultation, which finishes on 2 August. We will look at everything in the round after that.

The domestic abuse commissioner will be funded by the Home Office and operate UK-wide. The £90 million will be subject to the Barnett formula for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Ensuring that everyone has a decent, affordable, secure home is a key priority for this Government. That is why we have made a commitment to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end the practice altogether, and why we are dedicated to preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place. It is simply unacceptable that people have to sleep on the streets in 2019. That does not reflect the country we want to be and I am determined to put a stop to it.

My Department, with support from colleagues across Government, has been working tirelessly to put in place new support for people who sleep rough. This has included the rough sleeping strategy, published last August, which sets out our plan to end rough sleeping, alongside bespoke support and funding for local areas through the rough sleeping initiative.

I want to focus specifically on the work the Department is doing to help women. We know that violence and abuse are a key factor in women being made homeless or having to sleep rough. Through our rough sleeping strategy, boldly backed by £100 million in funding, we are providing more support to those sleeping rough or who are at risk of sleeping rough. Crucially, this includes additional funding for dedicated accommodation, frontline workers who are trained to support vulnerable women, staff working with victims of domestic abuse in local authority housing options, rapid rehousing pathway navigators, and our Somewhere Safe to Stay assessment centres. We will extend this to voluntary organisations, commissioned and non-commissioned services, and staff in homeless hostels.

We have undertaken a procurement exercise to recruit the right organisations to deliver the training and we expect to award contracts to successful suppliers in the near future. As part of our rapid rehousing pathway, we recently announced a Somewhere Safe to Stay hub in Brighton, which will focus on supporting women to get off the streets. These hubs build on the No Second Night Out model rapidly to assess the needs of people who are sleeping rough and those who are at risk of sleeping rough, and support them to get the right help quickly. The Brighton service will be a two-hub model, with one hub reserved for women only and specialising in tackling complex needs. The second hub will be delivered by the domestic abuse charity partner RISE.

We are continuing to provide funding through the rough sleeping initiative to ensure that provision is in place for women who sleep rough. This supports a locally driven approach, with local authorities leading the charge. For instance, Southwark is receiving funding of £585,000. This includes funding for a support worker, through Solace Women’s Aid, which will work with offenders who have experienced domestic abuse. Medway is receiving funding of £486,000, which includes a specialist mental health worker to work with people who have experienced domestic abuse and other health issues, as well as additional housing-led approaches for women with medium and high needs, and couples.

We are supporting 63 projects across England to provide support for over 2,500 victims and their families, and over 2,200 additional bed spaces in accommodation-based services, including refuge. In response to the earlier question, the definition of domestic abuse used by the Home Office and by us includes coercive control.

Underpinning our work on rough sleeping is the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which came into force last April. This is the most ambitious reform to homelessness legislation in decades. I am sure many Members are aware that the Act brought in a number of new duties and strengthened a number of existing ones. The Act extends the duties that local authorities owe to homeless households and expands the types of household that are entitled to help. That means that, for the first time, people without dependent children, who are often not deemed to be in priority need and were often turned away with little or no assistance, are now entitled to help from their local authority.

The Act strengthened the advice and information duty. This enhanced duty means that local authorities must provide free advice and information about homelessness and the prevention of homelessness. They must also ensure they design that advice to meet the needs of particularly vulnerable groups, including those who are victims of domestic abuse.

The Act also strengthened the prevention duty, meaning that local authorities must take reasonable steps to try to prevent a person who is threatened with homelessness within 56 days from becoming homeless regardless of priority need status or whether they have made themselves intentionally homeless. Local authorities must now also take reasonable steps to try to relieve a person of their homelessness, again for a period of 56 days, regardless of priority need status or whether this was done intentionally. At the heart of the Act is a more person-centred approach to find bespoke solutions, including for victims of domestic abuse.

We want survivors to stay in their own homes, when it is safe and possible to do so. Sanctuary schemes are supported as part of our £22 million fund, which lasts from 2018 to 2020. The duty also covers sanctuary schemes across the country. We will work closely with the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to make sure that that option is always there.

A new duty was also introduced for specified public authorities to refer those whom they think might be homeless or threatened with homelessness to a local housing authority of their choice. Children’s services and A&E services are among the specified public authorities. That will help to ensure that people’s housing needs are considered and that services work together more effectively. We know there have been significant changes for local authorities, which it has taken time to embed. Good progress is being made, but we know that there is more to be done by local areas.

As to our most recent statistics, they are experimental, but there are some promising signs. Since the introduction of the Act just nine months ago, more than 60,000 households, including families and single individuals, have been helped to secure accommodation.

I welcome the report produced by the all-party group, but there are a few discrepancies in it, which I think I must pick up on. Certainly, most of the experiences cited happened before the Homelessness Reduction Act came into force, and I completely understand why. I am aware that prior to the Act people were sometimes turned away without being able to make a homelessness application. That is precisely why the Act is so important and why it had cross-Government—indeed, cross-Chamber—support.

Local authorities must now assess everyone’s needs if they are homeless or threatened—

Domestic Abuse

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I commend what the hon. Gentleman says. I know from my ministerial experience the incredible work and support services that are provided in Northern Ireland. As I indicated in a previous answer, I would like to consider how we can ensure that there is a good connection with each of the devolved Administrations, and perhaps we can have a further conversation outside the Chamber about that.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Grimsby has had domestic violence provision for more than 40 years. The refuge is run by Denise Farman, who does an excellent job, and women arrive from all across the country to receive support, often with their children in tow. The service is funded only in terms of the property’s rent, through housing benefit. There is no additional funding for any of the other services it provides, including specialist support for the children—everything from swings and play equipment to talking therapies. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is essential to ensure that this funding is ring-fenced, so that the broad provision of these services is available and sustainable for the long term, and they do not have to worry about year-to-year funding gaps or rely on public funding through donations?

[James Brokenshire]

I thank the hon. Lady for highlighting that specific service; I know that the Minister for Women, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who is on the Front Bench, has visited it. Ultimately, we want to ensure long-term sustainability and confidence in service provision to meet local needs. I remain open-minded about how we look at this as the consultation develops. The duty is intended to place in the minds of local authorities the way in which funding is provided and the need for services for children or other specialist support, outreach or accommodation-based services. The point of the consultation is to listen and ensure that when we implement this through the Bill, we do it well.

Bird Nesting Sites: Protection

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) on obtaining this debate in response to the public e-petition, which has rightly engendered a lot of support and interest up and down the country.

The petition comes virtually at the same time as the publication of the United Nations report that shows the extinction rates accelerating and “nature’s dangerous decline”. That report, from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, raises some interesting points. It ascribes some of the loss of those natural species and habitats to

“changes in land and sea use; direct exploitation of organisms; climate change; pollution; and invasion of alien species”.

I instigated a debate here on the latter subject not long ago, regarding the importing of plants, trees and so forth from overseas.

It seems to me that the RSPB strikes a chord when it states:

“We cannot keep trying to squeeze nature into smaller and smaller spaces or demanding it fits in with our plans.”

The problem is that since 1970 the global human population has more than doubled, from 3.7 billion to 7.6 billion. Since 1900, the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats has fallen by at least 20%. There has also been a 100% growth of urban areas since 1992. All those things conspire to squeeze out nature or, if not to squeeze it out, to squeeze it into a tighter spot.

That is why I believe that, with the exception of some eminent hon. Members sitting around this Chamber, we have woken up very late to all this. There must be a trade-off between economic growth and the need to provide houses for people, which no one debates, and the requirement to ensure that the built environment is sustainable for the natural environment. We cannot have one without the other. Where would the world be without birdsong? A very sad place. Where would the world be without swallows? I have not spotted a swallow in my part of the world, Devon, at all this year.

Doing nothing is simply not an option. For too long we have put up with some of the behaviour of the volume house builders. It is perhaps unfair to paint them all with the same brush. It is an easy thing to castigate, but somebody has to build those houses. I lament that there are not more local house builders. I think this Government can do a lot more, as they have said they will, in encouraging smaller local house builders—those same house builders who were squeezed out by the last recession—to play their role, because they are from the communities in which they will be building, so they are likely to build in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way.

Time and time again we have seen, up and down the country, the major volume house builders riding roughshod over local planning officers—because there are not enough of them and many of them are not qualified enough—changing the terms on which they develop and, too often, squeezing out the natural environment. I am not against profit; I am a Conservative, and I believe in profit and that a rising tide lifts all ships. However, I am a believer in responsible capitalism, and it is about time that this Government, or any Government of any hue, were a little tougher with some of those volume house builders. Perhaps then we, as Members of Parliament, would not have to put up with so many constituents complaining to us about shoddy finishes and the like.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

The point the right hon. Gentleman is making about the volume house builders and their complete disregard, it seems to me, for some of the planning regulations in place has been reflected in my local authority area. In Humberston, Persimmon Homes has cut down about 200 perfectly healthy trees to build its properties without having the proper permissions in place. It will now have to replant all those trees, but they should not have been removed in the first place. Does he agree that there should be much more enforceable action on these big build companies to ensure that they adhere to the rules that are laid down in the first place?

[Sir Hugo Swire]

I do and I do not agree; I agree that that sort of behaviour is wholly unacceptable, but I do not agree that they should replace like for like, if it is the case that they have done this where there were tree preservation orders or the like. If they have cut down a number of trees, they should be obliged to plant many, many times the amount of trees they have cut down, to encourage a change in the pattern of their behaviour.

I am afraid that it often comes down to the lack of local planning officers or their inability to challenge those large companies. Local councils are terrified of being taken to appeal, because then they have to fund it, so it becomes a vicious circle and a win-win for the volume house builders, as we have seen—although I say again to the volume house builders, or their representatives watching this debate, that I do not view them all in the same light.

That is one of the points on which I wish to conclude. The Government have been quite clear, but they need to be a little bit clearer what they are going to do about this. Why do we not have a register run by the Department, naming and shaming the worst offenders, so we can see on a regular basis which house builders and developers are behaving responsibly and which are not? There are also such things as shareholder action groups, and they and others can vote at annual general meetings and so forth and can bring the matter to the board’s attention. Naming and shaming, in this instance, is an extraordinarily good way to proceed.

I believe it is time to stand up to that sort of abuse. We are in the slight conundrum—or I am—of castigating some of these volume house builders while at the same time recognising that we need to build more houses, and quickly, if we are to avert what is becoming a national crisis in getting younger people on to the housing ladder. However, with the current scrutiny of developers, I would have thought it would make eminent good sense from the point of view of their own public relations. Indeed, if I were advising them—I am not available to advise them, incidentally—on public relations, I would say, “This is precisely the sort of headline that we don’t want to read about ourselves.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry]

The application from my hon. Friend to be the high-profile supporter of the new south-western powerhouse is now complete. I look forward to working with her to ensure we provide support for her ambitions and those of the people she represents.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Online agent Rightmove continues to allow discrimination against low earners, single parents and the disabled by declaring “No DSS” on its portals. Will the Minister please take action to end this potentially unlawful practice?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)]

First, I thank the hon. Lady for all the hard work she put in when she was on the Opposition Front Bench and for the principled stand she has taken. It has been a pleasure working with her. Secondly, we have declared that we want all sites to take off “No DSS”-type adverts. I have been very encouraged by what has happened with Zoopla and National Westminster bank. This work is ongoing, but I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady to see what we can do to spread it further.