Non-commissioned Exempt Accommodation

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I wanted to start with a small tribute. In the weeks before he died, exempt accommodation was one of the last campaigns I was working on with my dear friend the then Member for Birmingham, Erdington, the late Jack Dromey. Parts of Stockland Green in his constituency had been saturated with HMO-style exempt conversions and caused serious issues with crime and community unrest.

Jack spent his career fighting to improve the lives of his constituents in Erdington. Sorting out the scandal of exempt accommodation was the kind of campaign he lived and breathed. That is why, working with his local inspector, he was able to get an extra 24 officers deployed to Stockland Green to address the antisocial behaviour and crime associated with some of this transient accommodation. All of us have lost a great champion with his passing, but for his sake and for the people of Erdington it is important that we fix this issue once and for all.

Birmingham has the most units of non-commissioned exempt accommodation in the country, with some 20,000 units and more than 4,000 properties registered as exempt. As we have heard, safety and quality concerns are widespread. Several of my city’s largest providers have been issued regulatory notices by the Regulator of Social Housing for finance and governance issues. Hundreds of exempt properties in our city have been found to be unsafe. For this, literally millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being shovelled to the operators of these properties without apparent due diligence or scrutiny.

Over the past few years, I have worked closely with providers, residents, the police, the sector and community groups to get to the bottom of why this sector has doubled in our city in just a few years and why so much of this accommodation is substandard and badly managed. I have had first-hand experience of dealing with this myself in the case of Saif Lodge in my constituency. I had been aware of some of the issues at Saif Lodge for some time since I was elected, but after my constituents alerted me to the shocking rise in crime surrounding this property, I carried out a spot check to see for myself what was going on. I was shocked by what I found—25 men and women, including ex-offenders, housed with severe issues ranging from addiction and substance misuse to mental health problems.

Just one solitary support worker was on duty, who told me that the hostel was manned only on weekdays, with residents otherwise left to their own devices. The conditions were utterly substandard—cold, filthy and cramped. The downstairs toilet had broken and flooded and been left unfixed. The smell was hair-raising. Access to the property was via a code that was regularly shared with strangers who were always in and out of the property. Communal spaces were in a horrible state. No wonder residents were frequently found spilling out and loitering outside. This was not a place where any of us could happily live, let alone get a life back on track following a crisis.

I commend my local community, especially the residents on Fountain Road; Birmingham City Council; its leader, Ian Ward; and West Midlands police, including my local Inspector Lee Trinder and Sergeant Bushra Zarif. They have been absolutely brilliant in working with me on this campaign. Jane Haynes from Birmingham Live has been diligent in raising awareness of this issue for many years. Over many months, we were able to gather the evidence we needed to take the case to court, and finally, last year, we succeeded in shutting Saif Lodge down—the first order of its kind in the country. That was a great achievement, but there can be no doubt that this is not evidence of a system that is working. The resources from police and ambulance call-outs, and the misery inflicted on residents and the community alike, have been immense. We cannot shut down every Saif Lodge—there are far too many. Shutting down Saif Lodge did not stop the same people setting up another exempt property in another constituency down the road. Actually, it was in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who made such a passionate speech.

That brings me to the need for reform. Bad landlords are exploiting this system for a profit while our communities and vulnerable people pay the price. I say to the Government today: care cannot be provided on the cheap. Last year Birmingham City Council inspected over 400 exempt properties, in which they found over 1,000 category 1 hazards that posed

“a serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety”.

As part of these inspections, the council found a further 600 category 2 hazards, which include fire safety issues, asbestos, and excessive heat or cold. This is from just a fraction of our stock in Birmingham.

Of the 21,317 exempt accommodation properties identified by Birmingham City Council as part of its investigation, about 20,000 are not commissioned by the local authority. Landlords who apply for registered provider status seek referrals for vulnerable people beyond the city’s boundaries, bringing people with support needs to Birmingham where they are remote from their natural support networks. The truth is that too many bad landlords are getting into this sector for precisely the wrong reasons. They are exploiting a toxic cocktail of under-regulation, a Conservative housing crisis, and an epidemic of unmet need after years of council cuts. There are good providers, even brilliant ones, operating in Birmingham who are trying to do the right thing, but, as we have heard, there is a growing underbelly too.

The definition of what support residents receive in exchange for higher rents is far too vague and open to exploitation. In fact, there is no statutory definition at all. The ambit of the Regulator of Social Housing is too narrow and too passive to pick up the exploiters, its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to look only at providers with more than 1,000 units of exempt property has become a loophole for exploiters, and our local authorities do not have the powers or resources to crack down on antisocial behaviour and the oversupply of exempt accommodation in certain areas. I have talked to the campaign groups working on this in our city and heard that whole roads of family homes are being converted into HMOs to cash in on the higher levels of rent that these properties can yield. People are gaming the system and making money off the backs of vulnerable people, and this Government have put off the job of reform for too long. Exempt accommodation cannot mean “exempt from responsibility”. That is why it is important to note that there is no statutory definition of what care, support or supervision is in the context of exempt accommodation. Landlords are getting away with providing either nothing or variable ad hoc support to those who need it most.

Since previously mooted reforms of the supported housing system were shelved in 2018, the exempt accommodation sector has grown by 62% across the UK. The sector is now worth more than a billion pounds, yet in November, at an all-party parliamentary group for ending homelessness event, the Minister’s team said that they were too “light on data” to get on with reform. In recent years, we have had reports from Prospect Housing and Spring Housing and policy recommendations from Crisis, Commonweal Housing and Birmingham City Council. In 2017, the independent chair of the Birmingham safeguarding adults board commissioned a study into the experiences of vulnerable adults living within exempt accommodation. The findings highlighted issues relating to poor quality of accommodation and variable experiences of the quality of support provided and risk management processes. In 2019, a report commissioned by Commonweal Housing set out the issues clearly, concluding that the non-commissioned exempt sub-sector

“embodies a range of social injustices; the most salient of which are the risk of social harm, absence of user voice and barriers to employment and social integration.”

Several pilots and reports from multiple community groups are all pointing in the same direction, yet the Government have failed to publish their findings from the pilots or even to act on the recommendations. Lives are literally at stake here. Survivors of domestic violence, prison leavers, care leavers and people with mental health and substance abuse issues deserve a supported housing system that supports their transition to happier, more independent lives. Our communities in Birmingham deserve neighbourhoods that are peaceful and safe, not a magnet for crime. The taxpayer deserves to know that their money is going to support people who need it, not lining the pockets of criminals.

Enough is enough. We need a statutory definition of care, support and supervision, and resources for local authorities to fund inspection programmes for exempt accommodation in their region. We need to ensure individuals and families housed in exempt accommodation have a link to the area they are placed. We need to give local authorities and the social housing regulator greater enforcement powers and to strengthen the vetting process. Birmingham has called for the Government to align the existing planning and HMO licensing policies to capture supported housing provision that is currently exempt and to give local authorities powers to reject applications in a specific area on the grounds of oversupply. Our communities want action now.