Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 940 - 953)

WEDNESDAY 19 APRIL 2000

MS MOIRA WALLACE AND MR ANDREW CROOK

  940. So you think you could go to them and say, "This is a dreadful estate. We are now going to move you."
  (Ms Wallace) No, that is not what I said at all.

  941. What is the alternative?
  (Ms Wallace) Local authorities need to address these things. They need to talk to each other about it. They also need to have a focus at regional level to give the overall picture.

Chairman

  942. What happens if I bought a house in one of the areas—and there are increasing numbers in the north of England certainly - where three or four of the other houses in the street are empty and are likely to remain empty? My chances of selling that property are almost non-existent. What do you do about it?
  (Ms Wallace) You are at the edge of my knowledge here, since the great expert on this has just left.

  943. Who is the great expert?
  (Ms Wallace) Mavis McDonald, who led the work on this. Some of the issues that the team she led were looking at, were how you deal with the low demand in private sector areas, which, as you point out, not only means that you have living conditions that are deserted and therefore a problem, but also you have lost money on it.

Mr Benn

  944. Who do you think is responsible for dealing with anti-social behaviour in a neighbourhood which is in decline?
  (Ms Wallace) That is a good question. One of the teams that worked for us on anti-social behaviour looked at this and concluded that there was a lot of confusion about this and residents were being driven up the wall by this. It came to the conclusion that you needed to establish a clear leading role at local level and also national level. At local level it saw this as a role for Crime and Disorder Partnerships; working with lots of other people besides this partnership, but it felt it needed someone to haul up a flag and say, "In this area we need to do this."

  945. To stop you at this point. Local residents, who have a problem with a neighbour who is driving them round the bend, they are not going to get on to the Crime and Disorder Partnership. They probably will not know it exists.
  (Ms Wallace) One of the issues is that they should know it exists and there are named people who they can contact about this. This needs to be visible. People need to know what the rules are. People need to know they will get support. It was also rather ambiguous at national level. The Home Office has volunteered and announced that it will take the lead in actually supporting local strategies. What that team found was that this was a problem—again, this is obvious—that was driving people up the wall. That there were lots of people who could help but often their efforts were not very well co-ordinated. There was a lot of isolated good practice but it was not shared.

  946. Most people—certainly the people I represent—would think, "Right, it is the council that we should go to. It is their responsibility." Let me put an issue to you. Private sector households. The only powers, as far as I am aware, available for dealing with anti-social behaviour in private sector property, where the landlord will not act, is for you to take out an anti-social order. Is there a case for giving the local authority a power in default of where a landlord fails to act reasonably against anti-social tenants, for the local authority to be able to say, "We are going to start proceedings that may ultimately lead to an eviction"?
  (Ms Wallace) This issue came up in that team's work. The Home Office has now been doing a consultation on effectively that issue.

  947. Do you accept that there is a gap in the powers available?
  (Ms Wallace) Yes.

  948. Good.
  (Ms Wallace) I do. The issue is how you fill that. There are lots of issues to debate about how you do that. Again, I am getting quite into the detail of a report that was done by somebody else, but nonetheless there is a consultation being conducted by the Home Office on the specific questions which are set out in that report. They do raise issues about the relationship between local authorities and the private landlords. But they are issues, as you know, that are really hampering the work on the way to tackle this.

Mr Cummings

  949. Are the consultations timetabled, or will you come back in a year's time and it will still be consultative? What is the time-tabling for it?
  (Ms Wallace) I think the consultation on that is scheduled to close in the summer, although I will correct myself with the Clerk if that is wrong. The aim is that the decision should be announced on that by the end of the year.

Mr Benn

  950. Could I put a second difficult issue to you. Housing estate, area of low demand, housing officers under pressure to fill the properties as we go on about the void rate, yet local beat officer says, "I know the person who has applied has convictions as long as your arm for burglary. They have done one part of town and now they are going to move here." Why should we allocate that property to someone who is likely to end up burgling the neighbours? Is there a case for local authorities or registered social landlords, in those circumstances, to have more power to be more selective in particular estates about who it is they allocate to the properties?
  (Ms Wallace) I think every landlord needs to think who they are putting in properties. I believe this issue has been covered in the Housing Green Paper, which comes out against blanket exclusions on the grounds that they do more damage than they do good. Every landlord needs to think about who he is putting in, where, and how the community feels.

Chairman

  951. The Committee is charged with trying to produce a report on the Urban White Paper. What would you say were the three or four key recommendations that we should be pulling into that report, based on what you have told us?
  (Ms Wallace) Based on what we have done?

  952. Yes.
  (Ms Wallace) What we would like to know is whether you think the ideas we have put forward in our document are going to help. If they are not going to help, what is wrong with them.

  953. Just the key recommendations from your document that you would like us to give consideration to.
  (Ms Wallace) How you get mainstream services to deliver effectively all neighbourhoods. Two, Local Strategic Partnerships. Are they going to work? Do you like them? Can they be improved? Three, some of the neighbourhood management, housing management, on-the-spot issues. Do you think we have the right approach to them?

  Chairman: Unless any of my colleagues have any further questions, may I thank you very much for your evidence.





 
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