Peter Dowd
Main Page: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
May I say from the outset that I am grateful to Shelter for providing the information that enables me to take part in this debate? Few housing sector organisations have as much experience as Shelter in the matters addressed by the Bill, so it is well worth paying a good deal of attention to what it has to say. I act vicariously without speaking with its authorisation. It is fair to say that Shelter is concerned that, as currently drafted, the Housing and Planning Bill will unintentionally reduce the supply of affordable housing, although I think it is being very generous in its assessment by using the word “unintentional”.
First, I want to address the circumstances of families who face housing difficulties. Families who are unable to buy or access social housing may have no option but to live in the private rented sector, which is in need of urgent reform because it is not fully fit for purpose. The private rented sector is no longer the preserve of students and mobile professionals. There are now 11 million private renters in England, and one in four families in England is renting privately. Rising demand and a lack of supply are driving up the cost of renting. Sadly, a minority of landlords are exploiting the situation and renting out properties that are not in a decent condition.
Secondly, private renters are paying too much and are living in increasingly worse conditions. England’s private renters are spending a staggering 47% of their income on rent. The comparable figure for those with a mortgage is 23%, while for social tenants it is 32%. Nearly 30% of private rented properties in England would fail the Government’s own decent homes standard, compared with only 20% of owner-occupied properties. Some landlords know that either they will find tenants desperate enough to accept poor conditions, or they will rely on the fact that if tenants complain, local authorities do not always have the power or resource to take action.
The Bill contains proposals to crack down on some rogue landlords, but more can be done. The proposals could be strengthened to give a strong and clear signal to rogue landlords that renting out properties that are in a poor condition will not be tolerated. The message is simple: stop exploiting people’s vulnerability.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend also accept that a small number of private landlords—this is certainly the case in my constituency and, I suspect, in his—use the private rented sector to launder the proceeds of crime?
Peter Dowd
All sorts of things start to come out of the woodwork when we look at the issues. The Government have to look carefully at the issue raised by my right hon. Friend.
Banning poor landlords from renting out properties is one thing, but breaching a banning order is another and it should be made a criminal offence.
Thirdly, as well as cracking down on rogue landlords, we have an opportunity to take a common sense approach to reform in order to protect renters and improve conditions. As a former chair of Merseyside fire and rescue service for many years, I am acutely aware of the impact of fire deaths and injuries on victims and their families. In 2013-14, there were 49 deaths as a result of electrical fires in homes—an increase on the previous year. The Government have an opportunity to bring that dreadful statistic down by introducing mandatory electrical safety checks. A simple change in the law would require private landlords to carry out electrical safety checks every five years. As has been mentioned earlier, the law already requires carbon monoxide checks. Behind every statistic is a person, a family, a life.
Shelter heard from a private renter who encountered dangerous problems in her flat as soon as she moved in a couple of years ago. She found the property was so dangerous she was at risk of electrocution. She said:
“During my first week living in the flat, I put my foot through the rotten kitchen floorboards. My landlord’s response was to put a bit of plywood over it. In addition to the hole in the rotten kitchen floorboards, I had water coming in through the electric extractor fan in the bathroom ceiling every time it rained. The ceiling around the electric extractor fan was perishing, there were leaks under the kitchen sink, under the bathroom washbasin and from a neighbouring property.”
She was told by the council that it was unambiguously dangerous.
That brings me to my fourth point. With almost half of renters—in my constituency, that amounts to about 3,000 renters—saying they have had problems with poor conditions or disrepair in the last year, we need to empower them to take action against landlords renting out unfit properties. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) has a private Member’s Bill seeking to reform the fitness for human habitation requirement. If her Bill does not succeed, or is talked out like the Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill, the Housing and Planning Bill will be another great opportunity to bring in this crucial reform. It would require a landlord to ensure that properties are fit for human habitation at the start of each tenancy and throughout the tenancy. The current systems—the housing health and safety rating system and the statutory repairing obligation—set out what condition a property should be in and what the responsibility of the landlord is, but they rely on overstretched local authorities first investigating the tenant’s complaint and secondly taking the appropriate action.
There are three practical measures the Government could and should introduce: first, change the law so that landlords are required to carry out five-yearly electrical safety checks—to be fair, many landlords already do this as a matter of course; secondly, reform existing law so that all private properties are required to be fit for human habitation—a dreadful demand to have to make in the 21st century; and, thirdly, enhance the rent repayment orders process by removing barriers to renters exercising their right by making landlords bear tenants’ fees.
Finally, I have heard comments tonight about brownfield sites. I could draw a circle around my constituency, and that would be a brownfield site. The idea of having a slab of concrete and putting a house on it would horrify most people in my constituency. It is not just about the industrial heritage. Many houses were built in a gerrymandered fashion, and the stuff used for the foundations was the cause of the contamination. We cannot just solve problems with a slab of concrete.
Several hon. Members rose—
James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)
We are all agreed in this House that there is a housing crisis in London. Demand massively outstrips supply and house prices are skyrocketing not just in real terms but in comparison to earnings. In my constituency, the median house price to median earnings ratio has increased from 4.83 in 1997 to 11.86 in 2013. With house prices averaging over £600,000, it is not difficult to see why for young people in Kingston home ownership is not a dream long-deferred, but perhaps a dream denied. We want young people to remain in London as a place to live, not just as a place to commute to for work.
The solution to the housing crisis in London—there was no dispute about this in all the hustings I attended before the election—is to build significantly more houses. The Bill provides an impetus for building starter homes and massively increasing home ownership. It is fair to observe, as Opposition and Government Members have, that not everyone will be able to afford starter houses. That is why the Bill is not an all-encompassing solution to London’s housing crisis. Starter homes have to be seen as part of a mix of new housing provisions, including schemes such as shared ownership and estate regeneration, which we are embarking on in Kingston.
The question is really this: where are we going to build all these houses? I am pleased that the Bill helps local authorities by identifying brownfield sites. In addition, that must go hand in glove with the work of the London Land Commission that the Mayor has tasked with identifying publicly owned land in London. It saddens me, in going around my constituency to my surgeries, to go past disused publicly owned land when we are crying out for affordable housing and land for primary schools. It is about time that Government Departments and quangos got out of the way and released this land that is lying fallow.
Labour Members have expressed concern that the Bill will lead to a reduction in affordable houses in London, so I will put my name to the amendment tabled by my constituency neighbour and the next Mayor of London, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), to ensure that that does not happen. The amendment will place a duty on the Secretary of State and the Mayor, working with local housing authorities, to achieve at least two units of affordable housing in return for the disposal of each unit of high-value social housing in London. We must ensure that at least two houses are built for every one that is sold, which is why I will be pleased to sign my hon. Friend’s amendment.
James Berry
I am sorry but I will not.
I reject the amendment tabled by the Liberal Democrats—I see that the eighth of the party that proposed it is no longer here—coming as it does from the party that talks a great game on housing and the vulnerable, but fails to deliver. Take the local authority in my constituency. The area was controlled by a Lib Dem council until 2013, yet it has one of the worst records for house building—including affordable house building—in London. What did the leader of Kingston Council until 2014 say about that: “Hindsight is a wonderful thing.” I think that is a shameful response to the 6,000 people on council house waiting lists in Kingston, and to young people who have grown up or come to my constituency to go to university but can no longer afford to live there. It is typical of a party that is quick to criticise yet slow to accept criticism.
Whatever the Government’s efforts to increase home ownership, it is inevitable that a large number of people will continue to rent. I support the Government’s intention to create a rogue landlord and letting agent database, and for London I encourage further devolution of that database to the Mayor, so that it works hand in glove with his efforts to accredit good landlords. I would like the Government to consider in detail the proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) to have a database for all landlords and letting agents—
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
The Government are right to plan to build 1 million new homes by 2020, to improve access to home ownership—particularly for young people with the building of starter homes—and to seek to speed up the planning system. The target of 1 million new homes is ambitious, and to meet it will be a challenge. To stand a realistic chance of success, it is vital that the Government use all resources at their disposal.
House builders large and small who build homes for sale, and the social sector—whether councils or housing associations—have a vital role. It is important not to forget UK pension funds and insurance companies that want to invest in the market rental sector. They have an increasingly important role to play, and the Government must provide them with a framework to ensure that they can play it to the full.
It is important and right to support people in their aspiration to own their own home, although demographic changes over the past 30 years mean that not everyone wants to buy their home—research shows that 37% of people do not intend to do so. Virtually all build-to-rent activity takes place in urban locations. That means that the sector has an important role in maximising the amount of brownfield land that is redeveloped, regenerating derelict areas in towns and cities, and revitalising our high streets.
Peter Dowd
Does the hon. Gentleman know how expensive it is to remediate brownfield sites? It can cost more than £1.5 million per hectare.
Peter Aldous
I was a chartered surveyor for 27 years, and the cost of redeveloping brownfield sites varies significantly around the country. The private sector investment in urban areas has played a role in regenerating Harlem in New York, and there is no reason why it cannot play a role here in the UK. It is being done in Manchester, where the city council has formed a £1 billion partnership with the private sector to build 6,000 homes, mostly for rent over a 10-year period. It is estimated that long-term capital of the order of £50 billion can be attracted to private rented new build in the UK. However, such capital is footloose and if we do not have the right policies so that these homes are built here, that capital will go elsewhere—to Tokyo, Berlin or Sydney.
There are two aspects of this Bill that need to be looked at closely to ensure they do not prevent private build-to-rent from realising its full potential. First, there is a concern that the requirements to include starter homes for sale in all developments could seriously impact on the sector. Thus, I ask the Government to consider granting an exemption from this requirement. There is a concern that the requirement to deliver starter homes as part of larger schemes could damage investment in the private rented sector as fragmented sites are much less appealing to investors.
Secondly, the “permission in principle” proposal in clause 102 is to be welcomed, although it is important to ensure that local communities continue to have a say in decisions that will affect them, and the need for high-quality design must not be overlooked. At present it is proposed that the “permission in principle” is only available to residential developments. While this is a good start, there should be a recognition that, on their own, homes are not enough.
Thriving communities need a mix of activities if they are to be a success. In order to create places where people want to live, there is also a need to have places for them to work, rest and play. Planning policy must reflect this if we wish to avoid the mistakes of the past, when too often housing development has taken place in a vacuum devoid of amenities, facilities and infrastructure.
In summary, the Government are to be commended on their ambition both on the wide range of issues that they are covering in this Bill and the target of 1 million homes. Many such targets have been set over the years and have then invariably been missed. To ensure that this is not another one that falls by the wayside, it will be necessary to use all the tools in the box. This means that the institutional private rented sector must be given every encouragement to work alongside the owner-occupier and social-rented sectors.