Oral Answers to Questions

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

For all that thunder and lightning, we are investing £23 million to support neighbourhood planning groups. I gently remind the hon. Gentleman that 94% of councils have published local plans, compared with 32% when Labour left office. The previous Labour Government wantonly failed to deliver on encouraging the take-up of local plans, where this Government have succeeded.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Talking of planning ahead, two councils in Somerset—Taunton Deane Borough Council and West Somerset Council—are waiting to form a single council. They have already had major savings by sharing services jointly, but they now really need to know if they can form one authority. Will my hon. Friend update me on the progress of this process?

[Dominic Raab]

The issue is under imminent review. The Secretary of State is giving it his personal attention and a decision will be taken shortly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sajid Javid]

I will not comment on the particular claims—I am sure that my hon. Friend will understand—but it is important that both the council and the police are working together on any such alleged behaviour.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Under its new garden town status, Taunton Deane is delivering well above the national average for houses, which the Secretary of State will welcome. Does he agree that the best way to provide the infrastructure that those houses need is to succeed with the recently submitted housing infrastructure forward funding bid, put in with West Somerset Council?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes.

National Planning Policy Framework

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman will understand if I do not talk about any particular planning application that is going through the process, but I can give him an assurance on local people and communities having a say. The consultations that we have set out today strengthen that, and one of the best ways for a local community to play a part is also to adopt neighbourhood plans.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

May I say a special thank you to the Secretary of State for the mention of ancient woodland today and the protections given to it? It is a very precious habitat. I wholeheartedly support the ambition to deliver more homes. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is quite possible to have more houses but at the same time to look after the precious environment?

[Sajid Javid]

Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend. There is no need to trade-off between the two. We have shown through the consultations today that it is absolutely possible both to protect our environment and to deliver the homes that this country needs.

Homelessness

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

Yes, I agree. In fact, joined-up thinking between Departments is a theme that I will return to later in my speech.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that it is important to tackle homelessness before it happens? The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which will come into operation in April—I was proud to sit on the Committee that scrutinised it—will deal with this by alerting services of the risk 56 days before people become homeless, and indeed the Government are providing £73 million to help local authorities tackle this.

[Layla Moran]

I am indeed getting to that point, at which I will be very generous in my comments.

I am sure that hon. Members are aware of the scale of the problem. How can we not be, when we heard the story of the gentleman who died right on our doorstep in the underpass of Westminster tube station just a few weeks ago? It is clear that the House needs to take this issue much more seriously, and I am sure that many of our constituents would agree.

It is worth repeating some of the key statistics from the Public Accounts Committee’s report. There has been a 134% increase in rough sleeping since 2011. The average life expectancy of a rough sleeper is only 47. People on the street are 17 times more likely to be the victims of violence than those in settled accommodation. Children in long-term temporary accommodation miss far more days of school, at an average of 55 days a year. The country is seeing record problems including record numbers of rough sleepers, and huge increases in the number of families living in temporary accommodation and in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, sometimes for two and a half years at a time. It has never been more important for this House to ensure that the Government are spending enough—and, critically, that they are spending wisely—to address this problem of national significance.

Having looked at the supplementary estimates—dare I say that I have not read them line by line?—it seems that the Ministry proposes an overall reduction of £470 million in its resource budget. I would be grateful if the Minister told us what impact this is likely to have on homelessness. But this is not just about overall spending; it is also about how effectively the money is spent. The Public Accounts Committee has expressed concern over how effectively taxpayers’ money is being used. There have been some welcome developments, including the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I welcome today’s debate on the estimates of public spending by the Government on homelessness, which is a big challenge across the country. Happily, some great initiatives that aim to improve the current situation are coming up.

First, I acknowledge the £1 billion investment allocated to combating rough sleeping through to 2020. Over the past seven years, there has been an increase in rough sleeping from 2,000 to 4,000, and one root of the problem is mental health issues, which mean that some rough sleepers refuse offers of accommodation. Moreover, many of the rough sleepers in the UK—nearly 60% of the total—are recent arrivals.

To tackle rough sleeping in Northampton, the council has brought together a series of local services and organisations—charities, faith groups, health professionals and advice and support providers—and the police to develop a rough sleepers strategy, “Together we can change lives”, which encourages people to prevent and reduce rough sleeping in the borough. I take this opportunity to congratulate Northampton’s emergency night shelter for its great work. It opened a year ago and has provided more than 180 homeless people with a temporary shelter.

[Rebecca Pow]

This very week in Taunton Deane, police are meeting with the chamber of commerce, along with health and housing specialists, to discuss the serious issue of homelessness. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is not just one solution or just one problem? We need to work together in a cross-departmental way.

[Andrew Lewer]

That is absolutely critical and very much in the spirit of what I am outlining here.

The 94 volunteers in the night shelter have helped 104 of their guests move into settled accommodation; 12 people are currently there. Alongside that is the work of the Northampton Hope Centre, which I visited last year and was most impressed by. Some 36 volunteers as well as local faith groups, Northampton Partnership Homes, S2S, Midland Heart, the county council, SSAFA, the Army, the Hope centre and the council all participated in a borough-wide count of rough sleepers in Northampton on 10 November 2017. All the people found were over 25, and of the 11 people identified 10 were already known to the council’s street outreach team. Of those, five were refusing to engage with local services, four had been provided with accommodation but lost it, as the report indicated, through their own actions. That shows the seriousness of the challenge and some of the complexities of the cases.

The rough sleeping strategy is collaborative—a determined approach to achieve a step change in tackling the reasons why people sleep rough and help those on our streets to turn their lives around. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, the issue is about working across all partner agencies to provide the right mix of advice, support and practical help to change each person’s life.

I believe that tackling homelessness also means building more houses. I am pleased to point out that since 2010, the Government have increased new housing numbers by 50%.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for bringing in this important legislation for debate, and I know how much work she has done on this issue. I welcome the Minister—a former Whip—to her new position. I am a private landlord, so I refer the House to my entry in the register.

As we have heard today, everyone is entitled to a clean, safe and comfortable home. Indeed, one would have thought that that was a given, but the fact that we are discussing this legislation today illustrates that it clearly is not. Home really should be where the heart is, but there are long-standing concerns about property standards in both the social and private rented sectors. I have been made particularly aware of the issue not just through my work as an MP and my involvement in the Bill that became the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which was guided so well through the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), but through supporting so many Adjournment debates, which you probably sat through, Madam Deputy Speaker, with a former Housing Minister, the previous Member for Croydon Central, in which I heard so many harrowing cases of rogue landlords forcing people to live in squalor and making their lives hell. I am therefore pleased that the Bill will address some of those issues.

[Catherine West]

Given that the private rented sector is composed of a plethora of small landladies or landlords, such as the hon. Lady, does she accept that people can be good landlords? We need good landlords and landladies, but we need good legislation and good enforcement.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady. I will be touching on that later. It is important that we do not make private landlords—the good ones—feel that we are outlawing them. We need to help them, but we also need everyone to have good standards.

In England, the private rented sector currently houses more people than the social rented sector, and that is borne out in Taunton Deane. Last year, the English housing survey found that 40% of homes in the private rented sector had at least one indicator of poor housing.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I am going to plough on, because I know that many colleagues want to speak.

The survey results show a pretty poor record and clearly demonstrate why the Bill is so necessary, and I am pleased to give it my support today. I am also pleased by the amount of cross-party work. When I talk to people back in my constituency, they ask, “Do you work with other parties? Are you always arguing?”, but we clearly do not argue about the many issues on which we can work together effectively, as we did on the 2017 Act. I have mentioned the private sector, but the problems are not confined to it. The social sector is important, too, and I do not need to remind people of the terrible Grenfell Tower fire, which brought the situation starkly under the microscope.

To give a few statistics about the scale of the problem, according to the 2015-16 English housing survey the number of properties with a category 1 hazard—things that pose a serious health risk, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) so ably pointed out—is just over 200,000 in the social rented sector, but over 800,000 in the private rented sector. I reiterate that social tenants currently have no effective means of redress over poor conditions because local authorities cannot enforce the housing health and safety rating system against themselves. This Bill will provide social tenants with a much-needed tool to compel the local authority to carry out repairs.

In my time as the MP for Taunton Deane, I have dealt with quite a number of issues relating to rogue landlords, some of which were very serious. One person had no proper back door that they could close, because it had not been mended, so they felt unsafe. Other people had windows that they could not shut or heating that did not work. I am pleased to say that we have worked hard to solve lots of these issues.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I am going to plough on.

I am in regular contact with Citizens Advice, which is quite easy because the citizens advice bureau is just two doors down from my office. There is me, a pub and then the CAB, and the church is opposite, so I like to think that we cater for all needs. The CAB has dealt with 530 housing-related issues in the past year, almost a fifth of which relate to accommodation that is not fit for purpose. Those tenants, who are facing very serious issues, will be able to take some action because of the Bill.

I make it clear, as the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) said just now, that the vast majority of landlords offer good accommodation. Private landlords are an important part of the mix, and we need to make sure they are not jeopardised in any way and that they offer good standards. I am reassured that the Bill will in no way seek to penalise those landlords—perhaps the Minister will clarify that—but simply aims to build on this Government’s strong record of introducing measures, in whatever way, that set clear, simple and enforceable standards.

Some of my constituents, not surprisingly, have found the current law rather complex. It is not always clear what their rights are, and a common issue such as dealing with damp does not always fall under the landlord’s legal responsibilities, even if it makes the home uninhabitable. The Bill should clarify such matters. It will introduce a wide range of additional health standards, such as on fire safety, through the housing health and safety rating system, which will all help to keep landlords up to the mark.

Stamping out bad practice is essential, and the Bill sets improved standards by giving clear indicators to landlords. Above all, the Bill will empower tenants who, in the worst cases, will be able to provide their own evidence to a judge, such as photographs of the awful things that are happening in their property, without relying on an environmental health officer or an independent service, which can add extra expense and can be time-consuming. That will be a helpful element of the Bill.

The Bill will bring greater protections for the residents of Taunton Deane and for wider society, and it will make residents’ lives happier and, I hope, more comfortable. I strongly support the measures in the Bill, and I wish the hon. Member for Westminster North all the best in progressing it on its journey.