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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): Order.
Housing (Sheffield)12.30 pm
Mr. Clive Betts (Sheffield, Attercliffe): I put on record what may be a technical interest, in that, whenever I refer to the need for additional resources for Sheffield city council, I am arguing not for resources for the organisation itself, but for resources that may be spent to the benefit of my constituents.
I am pleased to be able to raise this issue today. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, I spent 16 years on Sheffield city council, nine years of which were spent on the housing committee--of which I was chair for six years. I intend to address several matters. First, there is the requirement for new house building in Sheffield, which was set out by the city council in its strategy statement. More than 5,000 new homes are required by the turn of the century and it is estimated that about half those new homes should be provided in the rented sector at affordable rents because not all individuals can afford to buy their homes, whatever their aspirations may be.
There is a need for more money to be spent on improvements and repairs in older private sector housing. Again, the council strategy statement says that, on the latest estimate, 9,000 homes in the private sector in Sheffield are unfit. Some 900 people are on the waiting list for improvement grants.
In the council sector, there is a need for expenditure on repairs and improvements. There is a need to modernise all our inter-war property and a need for major refurbishment work on tower blocks. I do not have such tower blocks in my constituency, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie), who is sitting beside me, has a number of tower blocks in need of refurbishment.
Work is needed on deck access blocks, although Sheffield has already done a lot of work on them. I think especially of the partial demolition and partial renovation of the Hyde Park scheme to which the then Minister, David Trippier, gave special approval as part of the package of facilities provided for the world student games. That was one housing benefit that came out of that event.
Work is also needed on basic improvements, such as the installation of central heating. The difficulty is that the city's housing investment programme of £30 million is totally inadequate to deal with that range of problems within a reasonable time scale.
We have in this case a local authority with an excellent track record of identifying and using all kinds of capital resources. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, it has used all its housing investment programme and it has used other programmes such as the urban programme. It has frequently been given additional resources because it has been able to spend its money up to the limit and in a proper way.
The authority used prescribed receipts in the 1980s up to the maximum possible and it therefore developed very good planned maintenance programmes. In the 1980s, it installed almost 30,000 central heating schemes in local authority homes through a leasing arrangement. It developed a housing partnership scheme with local builders and housing associations which built more than 1,500 homes to rent. It used original techniques, such as the enveloping scheme which benefited 2,000 homes in
the private sector, which was followed by the use of the block grant scheme. That benefited 250 households in the private sector.
During the 1980s, perhaps in contrast with what was happening in some parts of the country and despite Government policy, Sheffield city council boosted its housing investment programme from about £20 million to about £100 million. That was a substantial increase to the benefit of local people. That was where much of Sheffield's expansion of capital development went.
Sheffield also pioneered many innovative measures in housing management. The area-based management scheme was introduced to devolve and decentralise arrangements, and area offices were built so that people could have access to housing services at a local level. A major consultation programme was introduced to ensure that tenants participated in the decisions being taken about their homes.
Tenants' associations were formally recognised, and a tenants' levy scheme--the only one of its kind still operating in this country--was introduced whereby, through their rents, tenants could pay a levy that was passed on to recognised local tenants' associations so that they could have a full and active involvement in what happened in their locality.
An official repairs scheme was introduced. It is interesting that, when I became a councillor in 1976, the majority of complaints in my surgery were about repairs. Now they are about the fact that people cannot get a home at all, and few complaints are about the repairs system operating in the city.
The problem is one of reduced resources; that is the key issue in this debate. Housing investment programme allocations were cut progressively throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. At the same time, investment for housing associations and the housing action grant were reduced.
The Local Government and Housing Act 1989 meant that local authorities could no longer use non-prescribed receipts for planned maintenance schemes. That was a devastating blow because planned maintenance schemes were an efficient use of resources. Roofs were replaced, homes were rewired and windows were replaced. Maintaining the basic fabric of properties eventually saved money because less money had to be spent on responsive repairs.
The council embarked on a partnership scheme; again, that was an original idea and the scheme was the only one of its kind in the country. Some 1,500 new homes were built, but what did the Government do? They introduced specific legislation to stop such schemes. I remember sitting in a room in Sheffield town hall and signing the agreement for the scheme at 11.30 pm as the new legislation, which would stop such schemes, was coming into effect at midnight.
The council introduced a leasing scheme for central heating whereby tenants paid a rent increase to cover the cost. That was stopped as part of the Government's clamp-down on local authorities' right to borrow in various ways to improve their housing stock. It is nonsense that people who buy their council house can go to a gas company and can borrow money to have central heating put in from the financial institutions that were doing deals with Sheffield city council to put central heating in council houses through a leasing scheme.
One is good; the other, apparently, is bad. If it is investment in the private sector involving borrowing from private institutions, it is good. If the public sector borrows from the same private institutions and tenants pay a rent increase to cover the cost, apparently that is bad and should be stopped. That was nonsense, but it stopped a worthwhile programme in its tracks.
Nationally, the Government have cut housing investment by almost half since 1992. The figures I have given show that, since 1990, Sheffield's investment programme has been cut from £100 million to £30 million. That is the scale of the reduction. The problems have not lessened, but the resources to tackle them have.
The Government's belief that, if they stopped local authority building, the resources would go elsewhere was not true. The number of private homes started in Sheffield was about 800 a year throughout the 1980s. The figure has not risen since 1980. In the 1980s, housing associations developed about 400 homes a year; the figure was lower at the beginning of the 1980s, but similar to the figure for the end of the 1970s. It is simply a fact that local authority building has come to a complete standstill, whereas during the 1970s, Sheffield built more than 1,000 homes a year. As late as 1980, it built 1,200 homes.
I now turn to the problems in my constituency which reflect those across the city in many respects. There is a diversity of needs. We need new homes. We have an innovative project called the Attercliffe village project. Local housing associations, the local authority, local builders and the local community are working together and we have the prospect of building new homes.
The difficulty is that there is no housing action grant to support the housing association scheme, although it is hoped that English Partnerships may help. The project is brown-field development on contaminated land. It can be cleaned up, but there is a price because housing there is more expensive. However, it is housing relatively near the city centre which local people want. If we could develop a scheme that also involved local people training to build those homes, so that we could do something about the high unemployment in the Darnall area, that would be a bonus. We shall work hard at that, but so far we have not had the necessary Government support.
In another part of my constituency, which is nearly out in the countryside, what almost amounts to a new town is being built in the Mosborough area. My hon. Friend the Member for Heeley, who was chair of the planning committee, will remember the initial aspirations to build a balanced community there, with public and private sector housing. Of course that balance has gone, because only the private housing is being built. It is a shame that some green fields are being built on, when we ought to concentrate our investment on the brown-field sites--the disused industrial sites nearer the city centre. Again the balance is wrong, and we need to sort it out.
Many people who have moved to private housing in the Mosborough area say that they want their elderly parents to come and join them there--but where is the council housing and the housing association property for them to move to? All too often, it does not exist.
There is enormous demand in the council sector. There are 13,000 people wanting immediate housing on the waiting list in Sheffield, and there are now nearly 10 times
as many homelessness acceptances as there were in 1979. The right to buy has had a disproportionate effect on the number of rented properties in my constituency. In parts of my area, we have had the highest percentage use of right to buy in the city, and for some sorts of property there is a ten-year waiting list.
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