Families in Temporary Accommodation

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Felicity Buchan

Monday 20th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

I start by thanking the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), both for securing this important debate and for raising such important issues. I was delighted to work with her and her APPG on the new homelessness code of guidance for cots in temporary accommodation, and I look forward to working with her on other matters.

The whole House will agree that every child and every family deserves a decent, safe and secure home. First, that means making more good-quality, affordable homes available to families and having an effective safety net to prevent homelessness before it occurs. We are delivering on that goal by increasing supply: in the Conservative party manifesto, we committed to build 1 million homes in this Parliament, and we are on track to achieve that. I know that the hon. Lady is very genuine in her desire to see more housing starts, but I would simply say that London, under its Labour Mayor, was the worst-performing region for housing starts in 2022. We are delivering more affordable homes—nearly 700,000 since 2010—and scaling up that delivery through the £11.5 billion affordable homes programme, which will provide thousands of new homes for rent and sale across the country.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

Last year, Merton Council had 72 two-bedroom properties and 34 three-bedroom properties to offer the 10,000 families on its housing register. The situation is so dire that it will not be long before a local authority goes bankrupt just on the back of temporary accommodation costs. Surely the Government have to intervene and do something.

[Felicity Buchan]

Yes, and I will go on to explain what the Government are doing. One of our schemes is the local authority housing fund, through which we have given £1.2 billion to local authorities so that they can build and purchase housing, both for recent arrivals such as Ukrainians and Afghans and for temporary accommodation. I believe that the hon. Lady’s Borough of Merton was a beneficiary in round 2 of the local authority housing fund, and received just under £750,000.

As I was saying, we have an affordable homes programme, which is a massive £11.5 billion programme that will provide thousands of new homes for rent and sale across the country. As the hon. Lady mentioned, the quality of temporary accommodation is also very important. The number of non-decent homes has fallen by 2 million since 2010. What is more, from April we restored the local housing allowance rate to the 30th percentile. This means that 1.6 million low-income households will be on average about £800 a year better off, making it more affordable for families on benefits to rent properties in the private sector.

Flood Risk: London

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Felicity Buchan

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I will call Felicity Buchan to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flood risk in London.

In July last year, my constituency of Kensington suffered devastating flooding. It was not only Kensington: the adjoining boroughs of Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham, which are represented by the hon. Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), were also badly affected.

I want to give a sense of the magnitude of the flooding. On that Monday evening, London Fire Brigade received almost 1,800 flooding calls. If related calls are included, that figure reaches 3,000, which is the highest number that the London Fire Brigade control room has ever taken. I did a survey of the most affected wards in my constituency, and although people in almost 500 homes replied to say that they had been flooded, the reality is likely to be multiples of that number.

Flooding has truly devastating consequences for those who suffer it, and I will give a few examples. I heard from one lady who had just bought her first home. The floodwater in the basement was almost up to the ceiling with only a few inches spare. Many constituents—not just one or two, but multiple constituents—are still out of their homes nine months later. A lot of the basement properties in my constituency are actually owned by housing associations, and residents in those basement properties have lost absolutely everything they own—from clothing and photos to important documents, everything has gone.

Constituents of mine were flooded not just in July, but three or four times over the past 10 to 20 years. That is an important point, because although July was a truly devastating flood, it was not a one-off. The flood that I am referring to happened on 12 July, but London saw another devastating flood only two weeks later on 25 July. There was another in 2007, and I should declare a personal interest in that one, as my own house was flooded on that occasion. Those were three devastating floods, but we also had floods in 2004, 2005, 2016 and 2018.