Supported Exempt Accommodation

Debate between Preet Kaur Gill and Shabana Mahmood

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and her work in this area. I know of the shocking case in her constituency. It really speaks to the problems caused by providers in this sector not doing what they are supposed or intended to do. I will come on to the regulations that I think need to change later in my speech, and I very much hope the Minister will take those on board.

If someone knows how to game the system, the next stage is obtaining properties, which these providers do by leasing them from owners. With that lease-based model, providers do not have to shell out large sums of money to buy property of their own; they do not have to spend lots of money adapting it, either. They simply lease houses, turn them into houses in multiple occupation—or HMOs—and, frankly, watch the money roll in.

This is the other aspect of the exemption in relation to this type of housing: providers are exempt from not only housing benefit regulations but other regulations, such as planning and licensing laws that enable councils in other areas to limit the types and proliferation of HMOs. Those rules do not apply to supported exempt accommodation. Having a so-called article 4 direction in a city or area—as we do in Birmingham—does not stop the proliferation of this type of housing.

In theory, we can see what was being attempted with those rules: to provide more money to cover the additional cost of housing associated with vulnerable tenants, and to allow enough appropriate units to be set up to ensure that an adequate quantity of housing is available. Again, however, that is not how things have worked in practice. The exemption from licensing rules and regulations that applies to other types of HMO does not apply here. Whole streets and communities are becoming saturated with family homes converted into HMOs providing exempt accommodation, housing vulnerable tenants and creating problems for the whole community, while failing the tenants by placing them at risk of very real further harm. It is a system that is failing everyone.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for the fantastic work she has done on this matter. As she said, I was alerted by constituents to the rise in crime because of some of these properties, with drug dealing, begging and sex work taking place. I undertook a spot check and saw first hand vulnerable people who were not getting the support they need and living in really substandard, filthy conditions—somewhere none of us would actually choose to live. It was only with West Midlands police, Birmingham City Council and our local residents that we got that place shut down last year. It is the first in the country that we have been able to shut down. Does my hon. Friend agree that the sector is fundamentally in need of reform and that we cannot put this task off any longer?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend has been doing huge amounts of work on this issue in her constituency. Many of my Birmingham colleagues are in this Chamber today. This is a big problem in our city, and I thank my colleagues for their interest in this debate and for the work they are doing in their own constituencies. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about regulation, and I will come to some of the regulations that will be needed.

Some might be thinking that there is surely someone regulating the system and carrying out the very checks to which my hon. Friend just alluded. There is a regulator for social housing, but it simply does not have the powers to deal with rogue operators, because those people know how to game the system. They have set themselves up as small operators, so they are outside of the direct purview of the regulator. They can make lots of money with little to no scrutiny, which is leaving too many people in my patch in utter despair. More than 150,000 households in the country are living in exempt accommodation—this represents a 62% increase in five years—and there are 1,600 such properties in my constituency alone. There has been a massive increase, and we are seeing these problems all over the country.

As I have said, the tenants are too often being let down. Many of my constituents come to me with their problems, and many of my colleagues have raised in the House, and with the city directly, the issues that their constituents face with their properties. It is not unusual to find properties that are in complete disrepair and that we would not consider fit for human habitation in any way. It is not unusual for vulnerable women to be housed with dangerous men in these properties—for them to be at risk of attack or, in fact, to have been attacked.