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6.59 pm
Mr. Greg Pope (Hyndburn): I enter the debate with some trepidation, given the number of members of the Environment Committee present and the fact I am not a member of that Select Committee.
I begin by warmly welcoming the Committee's report on housing need. It demonstrates the scale of housing need in the United Kingdom and the extent to which the Government have underestimated it. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) on his wide-ranging introduction to this evening's fairly brief debate and say with some consternation that I found little to disagree with in the speech of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Sir I. Patnick). I was interested in his recollection of canvassing deck access flats in Sheffield, and their later demolition. I trust that there was no correlation between his canvass returns and the decision to demolish the flats.
As a member of the housing committee on Blackburn borough council, I recall taking the decision to demolish deck access flats many years before local authorities had paid for them. The decision was made on the correct grounds--people did not want to live in them. The hon. Member for Hallam may share my view that the decision to build the flats in the 1960s was understandable. When faced with the squalor of urban housing in the 1960s, many local authorities did what they thought best and built high-density housing, some of it deck access. It turned out to be a tragic mistake, but there is no point in trying to allocate political blame.
I shall address a narrow part of the report--that relating to private sector disrepair--but I am not making a partisan speech. The Government attempted to address the problem in recent legislation and, to be fair to them, they recognised some of the deficiencies inherent in the existing grant system. In 1993, the Department of the Environment noted that the mandatory grants system had given rise to unsustainable financial pressures, and in 1995 it stated that
Also to be fair to the Government, some of the measures that they have introduced over the past few years have been an improvement on what went before. For example, there is fairly general recognition that housing renewal areas were an improvement on housing action areas and general improvement areas. It is a pity that, when the Government first flagged up the idea of housing renewal areas before the 1987 general election, they implied that the scheme would attract extra Government support. It has never been forthcoming.
It is now clear that, even with housing renewal areas, the mandatory grants system was failing. Many local authorities--including mine--have not been able to meet the huge demand for mandatory grants and, therefore, comply with the law. The Department of the Environment concluded that
Most of the housing in my constituency--and in east Lancashire generally--was constructed during the industrial revolution. Although it served its purpose well, there is little doubt that, as towns expanded, houses were built fairly rapidly and, inevitably, some corners were cut.
Much of the original housing remains. More than half of the houses in my constituency were built before the first world war. That is not unusual in the urban parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire. Decay in those properties has been unavoidable, and there are now around 9,500 homes in need of statutory intervention because they are unfit for habitation. Another 5,500 homes need immediate assistance to avoid becoming unfit in the near future. So, 15,000 homes require serious renovation. The Minister would not disagree that it is broadly unacceptable in this day and age that 15,000 families in my constituency should live in sub-standard housing.
It is interesting to note that, in response to the Department's consultation paper, the Association of District Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities stated:
The Government are now in the process of extricating themselves from that appalling mess by removing the mandatory duty on local authorities to provide home improvement grants for people whose properties fail the fitness standard. That is all well and good for the Government, but where does it leave my 15,000 constituents who are in housing need and the hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country who face similar difficulties?
Many people recognise the scale of the problem. The Select Committee heard evidence that there are 1.5 million properties that are unfit for human habitation in England alone. They include 157,000 homes without heating other than portable heaters, 272,000 homes without adequate ventilation, 165,000 homes without a bathroom and 150,000 homes that do not meet the bedroom standard for space. The director of the House Builders Federation told the Select Committee that unfitness in the private sector was both
Some housing is simply beyond repair, and in those circumstances clearance is the only option. My local authority is far from unique in having insufficient resources to clear such properties to make room for regeneration. As time passes, an increasing number of properties fall into that category and certain areas are desperately in need of clearance.
My constituency suffers from the well-known problem of clearance blight. People know that their properties need clearing, as does the council, but they cannot sell their houses, and the local authority does not have the resources to demolish them. That has led to an increasing problem nationwide, but especially in east Lancashire. People simply give up hope and abandon their low-value, privately owned terraced houses. As a result, void properties that are privately owned fall into disrepair and are abandoned while--even in constituencies such as mine where homelessness was unheard of 15 years ago--there is an increasing problem of homelessness.
The School of Advanced Urban Studies in Bristol produced a report in 1994 that concluded that there was a "crisis in housing renewal", and which went on to say that there was
I wish to refer briefly to public sector housing, about which the Committee took evidence. There is not a great deal of public sector housing in my constituency, where more than four out of five homes are privately owned, but many of the council estates have been greatly improved in the past few years. To be fair to the Government, the estates have been improved because the council has been able to work in partnership with the Government in the estate action programme. More than 1,000 properties in my constituency have benefited from that programme. I know what a difference it has made to many of my constituents, and I pay tribute not only to the Department of the Environment and the Minister, but to the local authority.
Sadly, the fact remains that a large number of properties--a similar number, in fact--have not benefited from estate action and they are in desperate need of investment and renovation to bring them up to the minimum standard. The problem, which must be repeated throughout the country, is with estates that have not been renovated--the estate action programme seems to have stopped but, as far as I am aware, nothing meaningful has been put in its place.
I have been trying recently to help the residents of the Sands estate in Rishton. Residents of that estate are in appalling housing need. One told me a week ago that a person would have to be absolutely desperate to accept a house on that estate. There is no way in which the local authority can access resources to help those people out of their desperate problems. I hope that the Minister will address the matter in his winding-up speech. What will to happen to people in such circumstances?The only avenue open to them at the moment is for there to be a voluntary stock transfer of estates such as the Sands from ownership by the local authority to a housing association. That is
fine, and I have no ideological hang-ups about it--my constituents who are in housing need could not, in the end, give tuppence about who the landlord of their property is. All they want is to know whether their properties will be improved.
"mandatory grants have created unrealistic expectations. The demand for grants has exceeded the resources available."
That is a masterly understatement in respect of my constituency.
"the main problem with the arrangements is that, while resources remain finite the system has turned out largely demand led."
Nowhere has that been shown more starkly than in my constituency.
"if the Government's proposals are implemented"--
they are now in the process of implementation--
"conditions in the private sector will inevitably continue to deteriorate and more people on low incomes will be condemned to live in officially uninhabitable accommodation, with the associated consequences for related policy areas such as ill health and area regeneration."
The Government have placed local authorities in a dilemma. Until now, they have stated that mandatory repairs have to be carried out on properties, otherwise the local authority can be hauled before the local government ombudsman, but they are not prepared to fund even a fraction of the cost of meeting that requirement. If local authorities spent money that they did not have, however, there is no doubt that the Government would seek to have the councillors surcharged. Local authorities are in a no-win situation.
"a significant problem and one that is not easy to resolve."
I agree.
"a continuing problem of unfitness and disrepair on a substantial scale, and that in addition to this enormous backlog, other properties will continue to fall into disrepair in the future".
The residents of those properties are entitled to ask the Government this: if they could not access improvement grants when they had a mandatory right to them, how on earth can they access a grant when that right has been removed? That is a matter of real concern in my constituency, and to the 1.5 million people who live in sub-standard housing. The Government should be concerned about that, but instead of facing up to the problem, they are running away from it.
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