Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they plan to introduce the Renters’ Reform Bill.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to enhancing renters’ security and improving protections for short-term tenants by abolishing 'no-fault' evictions and introducing a lifetime deposit, to ease the burden when tenants choose to move. A Renters' Reform Bill to deliver these commitments will be introduced when Parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made to ensure that Disabled Facilities Grant is more easily accessible to older tenants in the private rented sector and their landlords.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
Anyone can apply for a Disabled Facilities Grant, including people living in private rented accommodation, subject to a means test and an assessment of need. Tenure should not impact a person’s ability to access the home adaptations they need. The Government also funds Foundations, the national body for home improvement agencies. Foundations works closely with local authorities to promote best practice in the delivery of home adaptations, including providing information and advice to older people living in private rented accommodation and their landlords.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all new homes are built to Lifetime Homes Standards.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
The M4(2) standard, set out in Approved Document M to the Building Regulations, for accessible and adaptable homes is broadly equivalent to the independent Lifetime Homes standard. Planning guidance on housing for older and disabled people published last summer strengthened the link between plan making and the M4(2) standard. Government will also consult shortly on options of how to raise standards of accessibility in all new homes. This is a further step towards raising accessible housing standards.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of (1) the absence of social housing grants, and (2) the rise in interest rates on HM Treasury loans to local authorities, on the provision of new housing by local authorities.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
We have made £9 billion available through the Affordable Homes Programme to March 2022 to deliver approximately 250,000 new affordable homes in a wide range of tenures, including social rent, which Local Authorities are eligible to apply for
The Government keeps all policy under review and alongside the increase of the Public Works Loan Board rates the Government has legislated to increase the lending limit from £85 billion to £95 billion, reflecting its commitment that local authorities continue to have access to the financing they need to support their capital plans. We have been engaging the local government sector, to understand the potential impact the interest rate rise could have on individual local authorities’ capital plans and strategies, especially with regard to housing and regeneration. As ever, we expect local authorities to have robust financial plans in place which take into account the risk of changing economic circumstances as part of taking a prudent approach to borrowing.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure adequate and sustainable funding to prevent homelessness in the long term.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy. This sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period. This year, Rough Sleeping Initiative investment totals £46 million and has been allocated to 246 areas – providing funding for an estimated 750 additional staff and over 2,600 bed spaces.
The Chancellor has said that there will be a Spending Review this year, and the Government will be looking at long term funding for homelessness and rough sleeping services as part of that. We have made very clear that homelessness and rough sleeping is a key priority for the Government. We are working with other Government departments to assess what more can be done to combat rough sleeping and wider homelessness. This work is being overseen by the Ministerial Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce which includes HM Treasury and will play an important part of our preparations for the forthcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth on 5 March (HL13836), why they do not hold specific breakdowns on the number of (1) homeless asylum seekers, and (2) rough sleepers who are asylum seekers and refugees; whether the number of households accepted as statutorily homeless and granted refugee status in England equates with the number of individuals concerned; and if not, how many individual refugees were homeless in (a) 2013, (b) 2014, (c) 2015, (d) 2016, and (e) 2017.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
Asylum seekers are not eligible for homelessness assistance. We record the number of ineligible applicants, but do not break this down by reason for ineligibility. The Home Office provides asylum seekers with accommodation and support to meet their essential living needs if they would otherwise be destitute.
Rough sleeping statistics are collected through a single night snapshot. The purpose is to estimate the number of people sleeping rough across local authorities in England on a single night, and assess change over time. Since 2016, where possible, we have collected the demographics of people found or thought to be sleeping rough via the snapshot, to give an indication of the representation of particular groups among people who sleep rough. This includes gender, age and nationality. However, it can be difficult to collect even this basic demographic information from people sleeping rough on a single night, and often people are not willing to share this information, so it is regularly recorded as unknown.
The number of households that have refugee status does not equate to the number of individuals. A household can be made up of one or more individuals. The department only holds this information at household level.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that freeholders replace combustible cladding on their properties; and whether they will provide funding to local authorities to carry out this work if freehold owners fail to do so.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Government’s priority is to ensure that residents of high-rise (above 18 metres) buildings with unsafe Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) cladding systems are safe.
Ministers and officials continue to engage with developers, building owners and managing agents with responsibility for buildings with unsafe ACM cladding systems to ensure that they are fully remediated as quickly as possible. We have written to all relevant private sector building owners reminding them of their responsibilities towards making their buildings safe, and the Secretary of State has set his strong expectation that leaseholders should be protected from the costs of remediation.
We have reminded building owners that local authorities have powers to enforce these improvements if building owners do not take action and we are backing local authorities to take such enforcement action where building owners are refusing to remediate high-rise buildings with unsafe cladding. This will include financial support where this is necessary for the local authority to carry out emergency remedial work. We have also established a Joint Inspection Team to support local authorities and give them the confidence to pursue enforcement action.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will respond to the refusal of the freeholder of the Northpoint building in Bromley to pay for the replacement of combustible cladding on that building.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I am very concerned about the position the residents at Northpoint find themselves in through no fault of their own, and I am disappointed that the freeholder has not yet committed to doing the right thing and protecting leaseholders from the costs of remediation. The Secretary of State has consistently set his strong expectation that costs should not be passed on to leaseholders, and he has written to the building owner and other parties at Northpoint to make clear that he expects them to fund the work. He has asked them to find an acceptable solution urgently. We are considering various options for ensuring costs are not passed on to leaseholders.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will require the price of houses purchased under the Help to Buy Scheme to be no higher than that charged for comparable properties built by the same developer.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
Under the Help to Buy: Equity Loan scheme, the lender is responsible for the valuation of each home at the initial sale. The home cannot be sold at a price higher than this valuation. This ensures that homes are sold at market value.
The most recent independent evaluation of the scheme also found that Help to Buy prices have risen in line with the prices for other new build properties and are consistently below the average new build price.
Asked by: Lord Beecham (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how much funding they have provided to local authorities to prevent homelessness (1) since the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was enacted, and (2) in each of the last 10 years prior to the enactment of that Act.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. Already, this has provided over 1,750 new bed spaces and 500 staff– this means there are more people in warm beds tonight as direct result of government funding.
In all, the Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period. Since the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 was enacted on 3rd April 2018 local authorities have been allocated £346 million. The table below highlights the amount of funding issued to local authorities in each of the years prior to the Homelessness Reduction Act being enacted:
Programme Name | 09/10 | 10/11 | 11/12 | 12/13 | 13/14 | 14/15 | 15/16 | 16/17 | 17/18 | 18/19 |
£m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | £m | |
Preventing Homelessness Visible Core | 52.432 | 52.237 | 90.340 | 90.340 | 79.950 | 78.753 | 78.727 | 78.688 | 78.993 | 78.941 |
Preventing Homelessness | 9.015 | 10.067 | 20.970 | 0.920 | 4.122 | 3.338 | 10.663 | 5.598 | 51.074 | 44.744 |
Flexible Homelessness Support Grant | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 186.000 | 192.197 |
Rough Sleeping Initiative | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 30.000 |
Total | 61.447 | 62.304 | 111.310 | 91.260 | 84.072 | 82.091 | 89.390 | 84.286 | 316.067 | 345.882 |