Social Rented Housing Sector
Debate between Will Forster and Florence Eshalomi
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement.
This week, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee published our fourth report, on the condition of homes in the social rented sector. This report is the first of a series of outputs from our broader inquiry on the condition of homes. We have also been looking at the condition of homes in temporary accommodation and in the private rented sector, and we hope to publish reports on that in due course. In this first report, we focused on social housing.
Over the last 25 years, there has been substantial progress on improving the condition of social homes. In 2001, the last Labour Government introduced the decent homes programme to address the large backlog of disrepair that had built up for council homes. They set the target of bringing all social homes up to a decent standard by 2010. To achieve this, registered providers were given nine years to bring their homes to a minimum standard. That target was ultimately missed, but the programme was not without its successes. Over 1 million homes were improved by works carried out through the programme. By April 2009, the percentage of homes failing to meet minimum standards of decency had fallen to 14.5%, down from just under 40% at the start of the decade. That was a significant improvement.
Progress in bringing social homes up to a minimum standard has continued under successive Governments, albeit at a slower pace. However, as our report states, progress has now stalled, with very little improvement being seen since the pandemic. The latest findings from the English housing survey estimated that around 430,000 social homes still fail to meet the basic standard of decency.
Overcrowding continues to rise. Our report highlights that high energy prices mean that tenants struggle to heat their homes sufficiently in the winter. Cold homes and overcrowding can exacerbate hazards such as damp. Two thirds of social homes are at the highest risk of overheating during the summer months. Those are really concerning trends.
The Government have been clear that they want to deliver transformational and lasting change to the quality and safety of social homes over the next decade. They have made good progress. Following recent announcements, registered providers have more certainty about the standards that they will be expected to meet, and the increased resources available to enable them to do so.
Many Members will remember the tragic case of Awaab Ishak, who died aged two from a severe respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in his parent’s home. During his short life, Awaab had recurring cold symptoms and respiratory tract infections, and he had to visit the GP surgery more often than most children. Awaab’s parents reported the mould to their housing association in 2017, before Awaab was born. The coroner’s report states that
“no action was taken to address the mould before Awaab died”
in December 2020, at which point the mould was present in every single room.
During our inquiry, we heard from a mother whose 18-month-old baby started getting chest infections because of the black mould behind her bed. The mould had spread everywhere, but complaining got her nowhere. Awaab’s law is now being rolled out across social housing. It enables tenants to take legal action against their social landlord if they fail to remove hazards in a timely way. On balance, we thought that the Government’s decision to introduce Awaab’s law in phases, starting with the most dangerous flats, was right. However, tenants and housing providers would benefit from a clearer timeline of when the next phases of Awaab’s law will apply. Our report calls for the Government to set that out. For many residents, taking legal action against their landlord is not a decision they want to take. We will be keeping a close eye on the effectiveness of Awaab’s law to ensure that it delivers meaningful protection to tenants, especially the most vulnerable tenants.
By 2030, social landlords will need to make sure that their homes comply with new minimum energy efficiency standards. That is a positive step, though the pace of retrofits will need to accelerate if the sector is to upgrade the remaining homes by 2030. Under the official definition of fuel poverty, a household is not considered to be fuel poor if their home has an energy performance certificate rating at band C or above. However, those living in the homes that comply with the new minimum energy efficiency standard may still struggle to heat their home sufficiently if their energy prices are too high. Our report calls on the Government to amend the definition of fuel poverty in their forthcoming fuel strategy to reflect this. Otherwise, the Committee is concerned that the new energy efficiency standards, while necessary, will provide false assurances that tenants are protected from the multiple risks that arise from living in a cold home.
We welcome the Government’s new decent homes standard. Today’s standard was last updated in 2006, and it is in desperate need of reform. Shockingly, almost 430,000 homes still fail to meet the basic standard, 25 years after it was introduced.
The Government plan to bring the new decent homes standard into force by 2035. A lot of work needs to take place over the next nine years. The Building Research Establishment has estimated that about 45% of social homes will need to be brought up to the new standard. Although the last Labour Government’s decent homes programme was successful, many homes failed to meet the decent homes standard. The Government’s new decent homes standard will improve the quality and safety of homes, but we do not want to find that by 2035 a large proportion of homes have still not been upgraded.
Until 2035 is already too long for many tenants to wait. They must not be told to wait longer. That is why we are recommending that the Government introduce interim targets stipulating the percentage of social homes that should be upgraded to the revised decent homes standard in each year before the standard comes into force in 2035. That will help to reassure and demonstrate to the public that progress is being made. We are also asking the Government to introduce a process to review and if necessary update the decent homes standard periodically, at least every 10 years.
As I say, the Government have made good progress, which is welcome. The sector now has clarity, which it needs to meet the standards. Changes to the rent settlement will help registered providers to improve the quality of their homes. However, we are concerned that those steps alone will not be sufficient to deliver the improvements that the Government want. Our view is that there is a strong case for the Government to establish a new, modern decent homes programme to support social landlords to raise standards.
Even with the investment from the Government and the changes to the rent settlement, we are concerned that the sector will not have sufficient resources to meet the new standards. There is a real risk that the cost of new regulation will lead landlords to sell their homes instead of adapting them. Although we welcome the Government’s plans to make a transformational and lasting change to the quality of social homes, they do not address the long-term, systemic drivers of poor conditions, especially the need to replace ageing stock. We hope that the Government’s long-term housing strategy will be an opportunity to fill the gap, and we urge them to publish the strategy as soon as possible.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
The quality of social housing is a huge issue across my Woking constituency, and residents and constituents contact me about it daily, so I was pleased to help draft the cross-party report. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for her leadership on the issue. What response has she had from the Government since the publication of the report, particularly to our request for a new and modern decent homes programme?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank my fellow Committee member for his work to ensure consensus on this important cross-party issue, which many of us see in our inboxes. We hope for a full, detailed response, so we will allow the Government to come back to us, but I hope that they will recognise that this is a really important issue. If we want to ensure a lasting legacy for Awaab, it is important that the Government enact our recommendations and ensure funding for them.
Local Government Finance
Debate between Will Forster and Florence Eshalomi(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State, who is not in his place, for opening this debate on the settlement. I know the work that he and the Local Government Minister have led on in bringing forward this statement, and they have been strong voices for our local government colleagues. I should declare that the Secretary of State and I served at Lambeth council, and the Minister served as a councillor in Southwark, one of my neighbouring boroughs. I also want to pay tribute to the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), for the work he did with many councils to get us to the place we are at.
I know that many local authorities across England will be delighted to see that the Government are going to be covering 90% of the debt that has built up through supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities. The issue of SEND appears in all our inboxes, and it has been a big ongoing issue for many councils, regardless of which party leads them. The issue is how we continue to support some of the most vulnerable children, so we must ensure that councils are adequately funded in this area.
If we are honest, SEND costs are not of councils’ making. As the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), highlighted, the costs are a result of the broken system, which is finally being addressed by this Government. I hope that the Government will continue to address this issue in the upcoming schools White Paper.
One of the first things that everyone across local government asks for is certainty from the Government—certainty that authorities can make long-term investments in infrastructure; certainty that they have the funding to build the homes that we need; and certainty that they can start turning around the 14 years of under-investment in local government. I know that Opposition Members do not like to hear about it, but we saw 14 years of under-investment in SEND, temporary accommodation and adult social care. We should all welcome the first multi-year settlement in a decade, which ends the year-on-year waiting game that held back investment for too long.
This settlement has been called for not only by the current Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee but by its predecessor Committee, which was chaired by my wonderful colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). It is good to see that the Government are finally listening on this issue.
We welcome the reduction in the number of grants. We have been asking our cash-strapped councils to continually bid for small pots of money. That means officer time being taken away from frontline services. Councils are bidding for those pots when, in some cases, they will not even be successful. That is not a good use of vital officers’ time, and in some cases the councils had to justify submitting the bids in the first place. We really do welcome this crucial change.
There are two other areas I want to focus on, one of which has been raised by right hon. and hon. Members this afternoon. The reality is that even with this welcome funding, a number of councils will still face budgetary issues. The Local Government Association anticipates that more councils may apply for exceptional financial support. When we see more councils having to apply for emergency funding, there is nothing exceptional about it. We cannot have a situation where councils have to rely on emergency funding to carry out day-to-day services and to avoid declaring bankruptcy. I hope that the Government will look at this area.
Mr Will Forster (Woking) (LD)
I agree with what the hon. Lady is saying. I am concerned that the Government’s support package for councils such as Woking borough council—which effectively went bankrupt several years ago following Conservative mismanagement—is allowing them to borrow more money to pay off their Government loans. Does she agree that the exceptional financial support process needs to change immediately?
Florence Eshalomi
I thank the hon. Member, an excellent colleague on our cross-party Select Committee, for his intervention. The Committee looked at this in our report on local government finance, and he will remember that our report stated:
“Exceptional Financial Support (EFS) by means of capitalisation direction is a stopgap measure that avoids section 114 notices and allows councils to produce short-term balanced budgets, but can weaken councils’ finances and capital investment in the long term.”
There is an issue, and we cannot keep sweeping it under the carpet and thinking that it is going to go away—it is not. In the long term, we are building more debts for those councils, which we have to look at addressing. I am pleased that the Government are going to ensure that councils applying for ESF have a wholesale root-and-branch review of how that money is to be allocated.
We know that this multi-year funding process will not solve the underlying issues facing all our councils. Another area at the heart of this issue, which I have mentioned on many occasions and on which there is growing cross-party support, is the reliance on the most regressive form of taxation to pay for mandatory demand-led services, where councils have little control over that demand. Council tax amounts to about half of the settlement total, with an assumption of the maximum increase across the board, despite the fact that the Government have little control over how much that figure will be. The Secretary of State has highlighted that in boroughs where the referendum principle will be lifted, the Government are assuming that increasing council tax will help, with some councils having to increase their council tax by over 30% just to reach their core spending powers and the figures in the settlement.
I think we all understand the challenges the Government face when it comes to balancing the books and the inheritance they were left with after 14 years. These are difficult decisions that we have to make, but let me take us back to when the former Local Government Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton, told us:
“There is a real danger to the democratic process if there is not a link between the tax that people are paying and the quality of public services that they are getting in return.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2025; Vol. 761, c. 850.]