Social Housing

Sandy Martin Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

I would like to thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this crucial debate. Housing is possibly the second most important issue facing this country at the moment after climate change, and it is one that affects the majority of the population—some of them very badly indeed.

In Ipswich, we had 175 people accepted as unintentionally homeless and in priority need last year. We also had 42 accepted as intentionally homeless. I despise the idea that anybody should be categorised as intentionally homeless. They may have made bad decisions in their lives that led to them becoming homeless, but the vast majority had no intention of being homeless, and they do not want to sleep on the streets or on friends’ floors. They are not intentionally homeless, and I would like to see that category abolished altogether. We also had 12 people categorised as homeless but not in priority. That just goes to show the size of the problem involved, when people who are recognised as being homeless are not considered priority cases simply because there are so many cases that are of a higher priority.

The number of homeless acceptances in Ipswich is significantly higher than the national average and, indeed, the regional average. That is partly because people intentionally move into Ipswich because they are more likely to be housed. Any Member who represents a rural constituency and is honest with themselves will know that someone who is homeless in a rural constituency is more likely to be housed if they move into an urban constituency.

I am very proud of Ipswich Borough Council’s efforts to deal with this problem. Seventeen new council houses are receiving their topping out tomorrow morning in my constituency. We have 60 new council homes under construction on another site, and we have 16 new council homes about to be started on a third site. We have a 45-person temporary housing unit nearing completion, which will be taking homeless families directly out of so-called bed and breakfasts from next month.

I have been round one of these so-called bed-and-breakfast hostels where homeless people have to be placed. I was told to leave—I was ordered out of the premises by a member of staff after I had been there for about an hour, because I had been smuggled in by one of my constituents. My constituent told me, “You won’t be allowed to visit; we’re not allowed to have any visitors.” I said, “Well, I am the Member of Parliament,” and they said, “That doesn’t make any difference. The owners of this place will keep anybody out—councillors, Members of Parliament or whoever.” It is a place to live, but my goodness, it is not somewhere we would want anybody that we knew to live. We need to ensure that when people are homeless, there is somewhere for them to go straightaway, and so-called bed and breakfasts are not the answer.

Since we took back control of the council in 2011, 269 social rented homes have been built in Ipswich, and about half of them have been built by the council. I was proud to take my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) around the largest of those estates two years ago. I note that my predecessor took the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) around the same estate, despite the fact that it was built by a Labour council, and despite the vituperative opposition from Conservative councillors at the time and the opposition of that self-same predecessor to the development.

In that case, we were able to build the council estate, I am glad to say, and it was entirely for social rent, but my predecessor’s opposition was not always ineffective. A development of 94 new council homes at the 1,300-home Ravenswood estate was blocked. It had gone through planning application and appeal, but my predecessor went to the Conservative Secretary of State and persuaded him to block the building of the 94 council homes, on the grounds that 20 of them should be shared ownership. Some £300,000 of council money was wasted on the abortive preparation work, and £1.5 million of Homes and Communities Agency funding was lost to my constituency as a result of my predecessor’s direct intervention.

There have been not just historical blocks on the building of council housing; there was an attempt to block the 60-home estate that we have under construction on the grounds that it was all going to be social housing. The only way to ensure that we could continue with that development and be allowed to build the social rented housing was to set up an arm’s length company to offer some of the exact same homes at higher, so-called affordable rents. The local Conservatives even tried to block the homeless families unit that we are finishing next month.

Yes, we need far more financial resources, we need a more skilled workforce and we need more freedoms for local authorities to build those council houses, but we also need the Government to dismantle the intentional hurdles that are still there. Yes, I am very pleased that the cap has been removed, but the Government need to drop their ideological opposition to council housing—not just here in Parliament, but among their councillors. It is not good enough just to have the right words; we also need to see deeds.

This is not about planning permissions. The private sector has hundreds of outstanding planning permissions for flats and houses in Ipswich, but it prefers to build detached, executive homes on greenfield sites in rural areas because it can make more profit that way. Only council housing will reduce homelessness and reduce rates in the private sector by reducing the massive additional demand over and above supply. It will increase the stock of housing for sale by reducing the incentive for buy to let. It will provide the houses that people need, and the people who need them the most will be the most likely to have them provided as local authority housing.

The private sector has not built the homes we need. The experiment to bring an end to local authority housing and to put everything into the private sector, started by Margaret Thatcher in 1979, has failed. It is time to accept that, and it is time to do what we know works.