 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Housing and Regeneration Bill |
Housing and Regeneration Bill |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Hannah Weston, Committee
Clerk
† attended the
Committee
Public Bill CommitteeThursday 31 January 2008[Mr. Joe Benton in the Chair]Housing and Regeneration BillNew Clause 58Charities
that have “received public
assistance”
‘(1) For
the purposes of this Part a registered charity has received public
assistance if at least one of the following conditions is
satisfied.
(2) Condition 1 is
that the charity has received financial assistance from the HCA under
section 22.
(3) Condition 2 is
that the charity has received financial assistance under section 24 of
the Local Government Act 1988 (c. 9) (assistance for privately let
housing accommodation).
(4)
Condition 3 is that the charity has had housing transferred to it
pursuant to—
(a) a large
scale disposal, within the meaning of section 34 of the Housing Act
1985 (c. 68), for which consent was required under section 32 or
43 of that Act, or
(b) a
qualifying disposal that was made under section 135 of the Leasehold
Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993
(c. 28).
(5) Condition 4
is that the charity has received a grant or loan
under—
(a) section 18 of
the Housing Act 1996 (c. 52) (social housing
grants),
(b) section 22 of that
Act (assistance from local
authorities),
(c) section 58 of
the Housing Associations Act 1985 (c. 69) (grants or loans by
local authorities),
(d) section
50 of the Housing Act 1988 (c. 50), section 41 of the Housing
Associations Act 1985 or any enactment replaced by that section
(housing association
grant),
(e) section 51 of the
Housing Act 1988 (c. 50) or section 54 or 55 of the Housing
Associations Act 1985 (c. 69) (revenue deficit grant or hostel
deficit grant),
(f) section 79
of the Housing Associations Act 1985 (c. 69) (loans by Housing
Corporation),
(g) section 31 of
the Housing Act 1974 (c. 44) (management grants),
or
(h) any enactment mentioned
in paragraph 2 or 3 of Schedule 1 to the Housing Associations Act 1985
(c. 69) (pre-1974 grants and certain
loans).’.—[Mr.
Wright.]
Brought
up, read the First and Second time, and added to the
Bill.
New Clause 6Social
housing tenant mobility
‘The
Secretary of State, in accordance with powers contained in section 168
of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 (c. 42), shall introduce a
scheme to facilitate moves to and from the homes of tenants of social
housing in England and shall consult with such bodies as appear to the
Secretary of State to represent the interests of registered providers
of social housing and local government.’.—[Grant
Shapps.]
Brought
up, and read the First time.
9
am
We
are into the last lap. The new clause relates to housing association
and local authority tenants who want to move in or out of their
constituencies, and it is modelled on other previous schemes. People
often want to move from one constituency to another. No doubt members
of the Committee have met constituents who are anxious to move to
another part of the country, perhaps because of an elderly parent who
lives elsewhere, work or the need to move near to their parents for
help with child care. People have many social and economic reasons for
wanting to transfer their social housing.
Without mobility, we end up
with families in the wrong size houses. Unlike owner-occupiers or
tenants who can move more flexibly, it is sometimes difficult for
people in social housing to move property, because of the lack of a
proper scheme to help them to do so. Many members of the Committee will
recall that my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire,
who cannot be here today, introduced the national mobility scheme when
he was Minister in 1981—it was launched by local authorities and
new towns in England and Wales. In the 1990s, again under my right hon.
Friend, the Housing Mobility and Exchange Service, HOMES, took
over.
Grant
Shapps:
The fact that 100,000 tenants moved under that
scheme made it popular and successful. The current
Government inherited it in 1997, but it collapsed in May 2007 due to
apparent mismanagement. The remaining staff of HOMES, which had been
rebranded as Move UK, lost their jobs, and tens of thousands of tenants
have since been left in the
lurch.
My right hon.
Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire held an Adjournment debate
on the subject in June 2007, when the then Under-Secretary of State for
Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley
(Meg Munn),
said:
“What I
have described is a range of interim measures that we put in place when
Move UK was terminated, as well as a range of transitional schemes that
enable people to experience some of the benefits that were previously
available while we move to a point at which we can provide something
that addresses the issues raised in the Hills
report”.——[Official Report, 5 June
2007; Vol. 461, c.236-7]
It
certainly sounded as though there was an intention to solve the
problem. Surely the Housing and Regeneration Bill should reflect that
moment, which is why I have tabled new clause
6.
With growth schemes
and the requirement for the Thames Gateway to assist with housing
pressures, and possibly to fill the homes with people who have moved
from elsewhere in the country, a mobility scheme is essential. My right
hon. Friend and I think that, and the right hon. Member for Greenwich
and Woolwich is also in full agreement. In July 2007, he said that
the
“Government must act
very speedily indeed. The current framework is really not acceptable;
the existing machinery has collapsed and there is no realistic
opportunity for social tenants in many parts of the country to move
outside their area...I am afraid that this is a very serious
position, and it is wholly in
conflict with the stated objectives of Government policy and those of
the Hills review.”——[Official
Report, 5 June 2007; Vol. 461, c. 233.]
The Minister responded:
“We are working to
address all the issues raised by the Hills review, including concerns
about low levels of mobility. The review provides an objective,
comprehensive platform that can inform our future
development.”
She then
concluded:
“people need
social mobility if we are to support sustainable, cohesive communities
... the Government continue to take the issue of housing mobility
for social housing tenants
seriously.”——[Official Report, 5 June 2007;
Vol. 461, c.
236-8.]
This is surely
the moment for the Government to act. There seems to
be a consensus, pretty much on both sides of the House but certainly
within the Government, on this issue. In that light, I ask the Minister
carefully to consider new clause 6. If he does not feel able to accept
it at this stage, then perhaps we can return to it on Report, because
it would genuinely improve the
Bill.
Margaret
Moran (Luton, South) (Lab): We are
coming to the conclusion of this Bill. Many people are pleased about
that, so I shall keep my contribution brief. I know what my right hon.
Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire would say, if he were here,
although I do not support the amendment. As the hon. Member for Welwyn
Hatfield has said, the Government intend to rectify the absence of a
mobility scheme. I simply want to put some fire in their belly and to
urge some speed on the matter. If my right hon. Friend the Member for
North-West Hampshire were here, he would remind us that the HOMES
scheme, which was the main mobility scheme for RSL tenants, lasted for
many years. Among the many schemes it comprised were things like the
seaside and country homes scheme, from which many of my constituents
benefited. Indeed, when I was chair of housing in Lewisham, we used
that scheme very successfully to tackle under-occupation. It addressed
the issues of elderly people who needed to be near relatives or who
wanted to retire to a place where they felt more comfortable, thus
releasing family-sized homes in Lewisham.
Parts of the scheme were
successful, but it has to be acknowledged that the HOMES scheme itself
was not entirely successful, because the levels of mobility were never
as high as intended and the relationship between different RSLs was
rather cumbersome. I remember in my own housing association the
difficulties in matching properties between housing association
tenants. Many housing associations have very small numbers of units
scattered across large areas—either across London or, in some
cases, across parts of the country. That applies in my constituency,
where we do not have major stocks of RSL units. We have several RSLs
that have relatively small numbers of units, which makes mobility
within the borough almost impossible. As our Luton housing strategy
states, there is no way in which we can tackle housing within our
borough boundaries.
A
great deal of our hope for that strategy rests on the Bill and on the
Milton Keynes-south midlands growth area, but before that scheme comes
to fruition, we have an acute crisis where we simply cannot accommodate
people within the borough boundary. Furthermore, people who need to
move for employment purposes are finding it incredibly difficult,
particularly if they are RSL tenants. I have cases upon cases—I
had another
one again this week—where large families in RSL accommodation,
many of whom are very overcrowded, need to move either for employment
reasons or because they are severely overcrowded and large units simply
do not exist within the borough. They are prepared to
move outside the borough to accommodate their
family’s needs, but they cannot do that because of the
difficulties of moving between RSLs. They therefore find themselves in
a situation where they are playing ping-pong, being passed between the
RSL and the local authority in trying to find somewhere suitable for
their
needs.
The
absence of a proper mobility system does not make it for easy for
people who are in extreme housing circumstances, people who need to
move for employment reasons and elderly people who need to be near
their family for caring purposes. We know that the replacement for
HOMES was not the best success, to put it politely. Let us be frank: it
was a pig’s ear of a system that simply did not work—we
all have to be frank. Lots of money was put into a system that was
clearly not capable of dealing with
it.
If we are honest,
since then we have all to a large extent recoiled from looking at the
issue, because, having experienced such an unsuccessful system, the
complexity of trying to establish another system has
put this debate on the back burner. That is a tragedy, because it is
not beyond the wit of the Government to come up with a system that can
work, despite the unfortunate occurrence with the replacement to
HOMES.
The former
Minister for Housing, now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
indicated that she was in favour of a regional choice-based lettings
scheme. I accept that there is a role for such a scheme, but I simply
point out that in many areas we have not even got to a local
choice-based lettings scheme. In my constituency, the housing
department is considering one, but we have not got there, and my hon.
Friend the Minister has indicated that the situation is the same in his
local authority. We are some way off having even local schemes from
which to build a regional choice-based
system.
I stress the
urgency of the issue. This Bill and the Hills report, which has been
mentioned, stress the need for mobility within the social housing
sector, a point with which we all agree because we see it in our
casework on a day-to-day basis. If we are to make that a reality, we
need to do it speedily. I am not convinced that waiting for local
authorities to get up to speed with local choice-based lettings systems
and then trying to build a regional choice-based lettings system on top
of that will have the speedy impact that we need. I therefore urge the
Minister to consider how we can find a replacement on a national level
that has a regional choice-based lettings system built into it and that
is based on the principle of a choice-based lettings system—such
systems are extremely effective, when they work well. We need a
national system.
The
fact that we have had a rather painful time with the replacement of
HOMES should not undermine the fact that we need a replacement, and we
need it as speedily as possible, if we are to achieve the aims set out
in this
Bill.
Mr.
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab): I reiterate
the point about the importance of mobility. The hon. Member for Welwyn
Hatfield was
kind enough to quote me at great length on the subject, so I need not
add much more, other than to say that there have been mobility schemes
of various forms for a long time. Way back before HOMES, there were
other arrangements.
As my hon. Friend the Member
for Luton, South has rightly highlighted, the difficulty with schemes
that relate to only one type of landlord or to one area is that they
often fail to promote mobility on the scale that is needed. There is a
need to bring those schemes
together.
Many
years ago, in a previous incarnation, I was involved in setting up a
housing association mobility scheme which went under the happy name of
HALO, the housing association liaison office. That was limited to
housing associations, which was not sufficient, so it had to be widened
to bring in local authorities. London is currently exploring the
options for a mobility scheme. Good progress has been made with a
commitment of, I think, 5 per cent. of the housing stock from all the
participating London boroughs. This is a good commitment to trying to
ensure a sufficient number of homes to give momentum to the objective,
but that is limited to London.
I press my hon. Friend
the Minister to give a positive response to the new clause, because it
is about meeting a need and the current arrangements are
unsatisfactory. The collapse of Move UK was deplorable and I do not
think that it will go down in the annals as one of the finer
administrative performances of this Government. I wholeheartedly
endorse the view expressed by the right hon. Member for South-West
Hampshire. [Hon. Members:
“North-West.”] I always get it wrong. I endorse the view
expressed by the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire that
something must be done. The Member for South-West Bedfordshire is no
longer with us. [Hon. Members:
“North-East.”] The hon. Member for North-East
Bedfordshire is no longer with us. The answer to that problem is to
stop digging, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will provide
a favourable
response.
9.15
am
Lembit
Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): The right hon. Member
for Greenwich and Woolwich talks about his halo, which proves what I
have always suspected: he is a little angel. The new clause has been
well discussed already. It is obviously sensible and I support it. I
hope that the Minister this time does not have to disagree
fundamentally with something simply because it came from the
Opposition.
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government (Mr. Iain Wright):
Good morning to
you, Mr. Benton, and the rest of the Committee. I fully
understand the intention and purpose behind the new clause tabled by
the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield. I agree with the hon. Member for
Montgomeryshire that there is a political consensus about it. I and the
Government agree that mobility is important; we have already announced
measures to increase opportunities for people to move, and I will come
to those shortly. The ability to fund such mobility schemes is already
contained in section
168 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, which gives the
Secretary of State the power to make grants or loans towards the cost
of arrangements for enabling or assisting tenants to move in England,
Wales or Scotland. Therefore, although I agree with everything that has
been said in Committee this morning, the new clause is unnecessary. I
want to set out the Government’s policy on record. The
Government are committed to improving and increasing the options to
move available to social housing tenants. As the hon. Member for Welwyn
Hatfield has said and my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South has
reiterated, the benefits to individual tenants are obvious to us all.
Grandparents want to move to be with their grandchildren, families want
to be closer together and people want to move to take up employment
opportunities and we should facilitate that as much as
possible.
Mobility is
also important for the wider social housing agenda. Enabling an elderly
person to move from a property that is perhaps too big for their needs
to a smaller home nearer to their grandchildren creates a vacant
property that can be used for an overcrowded family. We debated the
importance of freeing up such properties to help relieve overcrowding
when we were discussing new clauses 13 to 33 last week. In that
respect, there is an awful lot to do and I do not want to reiterate the
points that have been made already about the difficulties with previous
national mobility schemes. Where we are now and where we are heading
towards are the important points to
address.
The Chief
Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for
Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), when she was Minister for
Housing, set out in December last month the
Government’s programme for making social housing fairer, more
effective and more personal. As I have said, we recognise that that is
not meeting the needs of all tenants and mobility plays an important
part in changing that, but we want to learn from the mistakes of the
past. We need to avoid them and we need to ensure that we meet the
needs of those who require social housing and those who want to move
within and into social housing. The number of new lettings in the
social housing sector fell from 591,200 in 1998-89 to 409,400 in
2005-06, and that has reduced the number of opportunities for people to
move. Most moves are now local, and arranged by landlords. The
proportion of moves through a mobility scheme as a percentage of
overall lets fell between 1998-99 and 2005-06 from 1.48 per cent. to
0.36 per cent. so there is a challenge there and we need to increase
the number of moves. There are three broad areas of mobility that need
addressing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South touched
on, and we have already taken steps to improve opportunities in each.
Those three areas are local, sub-regional and
national.
At the local
level, research by Ipsos MORI on barriers to mobility has shown that
most tenants wishing to move want to do so locally, staying within five
miles of their existing home, and enabling them to retain social and
cultural ties. That certainly seems true of my own
constituency.
Existing social housing tenants
seeking a move currently have to demonstrate that they have a
particular housing need, in order to be rehoused in
another area in the same way as new applicants on the waiting list. Some
local authorities already give priority to their tenants who wish to
downsize. However, this is not currently a national reasonable
preference category, and some authorities do not take this into account
in their allocation scheme. We want to ensure that all local
authorities offer their tenants the opportunity to
downsize.
We recognise
that many tenants will want to remain living in the family home where
they raised their children, and they will be able to do so. However, we
need to ensure that the existing housing stock is used to best
effect—the subject of a very good debate on overcrowding we had
in Committee last week. We want to ensure that tenants have the
opportunity to downsize—wherever they live—so that large
family homes can be allocated to families with children, or those
living in overcrowded
conditions.
Margaret
Moran:
I thank my hon. Friend for that. It is important
that priority is given to homes that are under-occupied, to release
family homes. When my right hon. Friend, the Member for North-West
Hampshire and I spent many a happy year on the HOMES scheme, our
priority was housing need. I notice that some London authorities are
talking about moving away from housing need as the main priority for
allocating housing in future. Will my hon. Friend take this
opportunity—notwithstanding what he has just said—to
re-emphasise the fact that housing need will be the main criteria,
rather than any others that seem to be emerging from some London
authorities?
Mr.
Wright:
That is an important point. I want to make sure
that everybody, regardless of status, has the appropriate house. As I
said, some people may need assistance to achieve that. We have
reiterated time and again in this Committee the need to ensure that
houses that are too large for people’s current needs are
allocated accordingly. That helps free up supply of housing to allow
new families to come in. As I said, we want to retain as much as
possible.
My
constituency will be very similar to others in that I often think of
it—I talk about Sheffield in a similar way—as the largest
village in the
world.
Mr.
Wright:
My hon. Friend says that Sheffield is. People do
want to stay in close areas—to be close to their families; their
children and grandchildren. Time and time again, a grandmother comes to
see me and says “I am living in a three-bedroom council house
and would like a bungalow close to my family. So that the grandchildren
can stay, I need two bedrooms. I also would like to stay in the same
area, as that will enable my daughter to go out to work.” That
is crucial. Such a move increases employment opportunities and we need
to be doing as much as possible to ensure that it can happen. I think
that is the real challenge to any local, sub-regional or national
mobility scheme.
May I
go on to sub-regional allocations? Choice-based letting schemes give
people the flexibility to choose where they want to live in an area,
and then to
bid for properties. My right hon. Friend the previous Minister for
Housing announced in December that we would take this
further with the investment of £1.8 million to deliver 18 new
choice-based letting sub-regional schemes, which give people the
opportunity to move across local authority borders.
To take my own
particular area as an example, Hartlepool is part of the Tees Valley,
and it could be that the vast majority of people who want to move, want
to do so within the boundaries of Hartlepool local authority. However,
there will be a number of people whose families have moved to
Middlesbrough or Stockton and they will want to move within that
sub-region. So we need to help that as much as
possible.
An
additional £2 million investment over the next two years will
enable all councils to be part of such a sub-regional scheme by 2010.
Eleven schemes are already up and running and the others will be active
by 2010. Cross-boundary mobility is planned in 86 per cent. of these
schemes, with most proposing to put aside a percentage of their lets
for sub-regional mobility moves.
Such schemes as Home Selector
in Guildford, Hart, Rushmore and Waverley have already ring-fenced a
set 10 per cent. of the housing supply for cross-boundary mobility
moves. Other schemes, including those in East Devon and the Derbyshire
Dales, High Peak and Amber Valley, enable all home-seekers to apply for
properties across all the local authorities involved.
The Government have agreed
funding of £760,000 over the next two years for the
implementation of a London-wide accessible housing register as part of
the pan-London choice. It is known as Capital Moves. This offers people
the chance to move across different London authorities. London councils
will deliver Capital Moves and are encouraging participation from all
33 London boroughs. The Capital Moves partners also include other
stakeholders, such as the Greater London Authority, the Housing
Corporation and relevant registered social
landlords.
There are a
further 14 sub-regional schemes in development, of which five schemes
include the ring-fencing of between 5 and 25 per cent. of the housing
supply for mobility purposes. Four other local authorities have already
committed to allowing sub-regional mobility applicants to bid for any
of their available housing supply. The remainder are considering the
level of commitment to mobility. So the main mechanism for local and
sub-regional moves is well established, with schemes already funded in
65 per cent. of local authorities and additional investment available
to other local authorities by
2010.
We have
discussed sub-regions, so now I come on to national schemes. Our
challenge is to make sure that we can meet the needs of those who wish
to move nationally, from one sub-region to another, and that is a big
challenge. We are working with the Housing Corporation and key social
landlords and authorities to develop proposals for increasing mobility
across the country. For example, we are looking at whether a percentage
of lets should be reserved and pooled for those looking to move further
afield. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, South mentioned the
seaside and country homes mobility scheme. We have recently relaunched
that scheme; it gives elderly tenants in
London the opportunity to downsize and move to more suitable and
preferred locations. Since its relaunch some six months ago, this
scheme has given more than 150 older tenants the opportunity to move
and resulted in the freeing up of much-needed and often under-occupied
properties in London. We are evaluating options for expanding
nationally the work done by that scheme and other mobility
options.
So
if I can sum up, I suggest with the greatest respect to the hon. Member
for Welwyn Hatfield that new clause 6 is unnecessary because we already
have the legislative power to fund a national mobility scheme. Let me
stress again the Government’s commitment and my own personal
commitment to this. Mobility is a key priority for this Government, but
I am very keen to avoid the mistakes of the past. We have already taken
action to increase opportunities for local and sub-regional moves and
we have put in place specific work and projects to determine the best
way to deliver national housing
mobility.
Mr.
Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op): The only reason I rise
is to emphasise the importance given in the Hills review to the need
for national mobility for economic reasons. While I accept what my hon.
Friend the Minister has said about local and sub-regional mobility, it
does appear from what he has said that perhaps not enough priority is
being given to an effective national mobility scheme. It seems sensible
to take a certain percentage of property in order to achieve that, but
can he give us some more reassurance that this is a major priority for
the
Government?
Mr.
Wright:
Yes, it is a major priority because a progressive
Government should facilitate social mobility to ensure greater economic
prosperity. This is absolutely key, and as I have said, the vast
majority of moves will be local and sub-regional, but it is important,
as my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton rightly says, that for
economic purposes we have that national scheme. It has not worked well
in the past, and as we move the Hills agenda forward in the next few
months and years I do see it as a major priority to tap into the talent
and enterprise of everybody in this country and ensure that they can
take advantage of opportunities and achieve prosperity. National
mobility schemes are a way to do that, so it will become even more of a
priority for this Labour
Government.
I hope I
have explained the policy. There is cross-party consensus on this very
important issue, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will not press his new
clause.
Grant
Shapps:
I thank the Minister for what
was a full, although I suspect not very enlightening, response. He read
beautifully from his eight-page brief on the subject, but it was
noticeable that the answer was actually missing. There is a hotch-potch
of schemes out there, but unless the Government actually grasp the
issue and pull them all together, it is almost irrelevant whether the
power to fund schemes exists in the Housing and Local Government Act
1989, because we do not know the time scale within which the Government
intend to act. I appreciate what the Minister says about the review
that
was launched last month; I thought that there might be some comment on
that review as we debated the Bill, and I am disappointed that there
has not been.
9.30
am
We need the
Government to commit to a time scale within which they will come up
with something more solid than the vagueness contained within the many
pages of answer to this debate. Will it be possible, by the time the
Bill is discussed on Report, for the Minister to come back to the House
with a time scale that would be appropriate for fulfilling the obvious
desire that exists on both sides of the
House?
Mr.
Wright:
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s
tenacity in pushing me on this. He had made a request for further work
before Report, and that is something that I am happy to consider, but
as I have said, I do not want to introduce measures in a haphazard
manner. This is an important policy objective; we want to get it right
to avoid the mistakes of the past, but I shall certainly do my best to
bring it back on Report.
Grant
Shapps:
I remind the Minister that the Government have had
11 years to get it right, and it would not be rushing it to try to put
something in place—perhaps not a scheme, but an idea of a
direction or a time scale—on Report. On that basis, I beg to ask
leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave,
withdrawn.
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