Under-Occupancy Penalty
Debate between Pat Glass and Sheila GilmoreWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Sheila Gilmore
Indeed, because of the nature of building at the time, a lot of smaller properties in the city, when we have them, are to be found in high-rises.
Pat Glass
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing the intervention. Does she agree that many current housing allocation policies came out of the recommendations in the Scarman report, and that a move back to pre-Scarman policies not only makes no financial sense, but is potentially dangerous?
Sheila Gilmore
That is helpful. It reminds us of the many ways in which we are going backwards.
In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, I mentioned a DWP Minister’s suggestion that if councils were struggling with three-bedroom houses that they could not let, they should have anticipated the problem and taken steps to divide those houses. I was fantasising slightly about how that would work. Let us take a typical three up, two down property in England; in Scotland, we are more likely to be talking about a tenement flat. What exactly would be involved in dividing it? First, either the tenants would somehow have to use the same door and stairs, or the council would have to create a separate entrance, which would cost money. One of the upstairs rooms would have to be converted into some form of kitchen, which would cost money. That leaves the downstairs, which would have a kitchen, but not a bathroom. Where would the bathroom go, or at least a toilet? A bathroom extension? Remember there are only two rooms and a kitchen downstairs, so building a bathroom would not be easy, unless it were built outside, and an extension costs money. Then I thought, “I know what the Minister must have had in mind: a portaloo in the back garden.” That would take us right back to the days when people had outside toilets, but it might help get the house divided up. It would involve not only huge additional cost but a style of living that I hope most of us would think inappropriate. That shows how little thought was given in practical reality.
It is the same with the idea that everybody could take in lodgers. That does not take into consideration the nature of many of the properties in which people live, and the difficulties involved.