Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has plans to prevent landlords from discriminating against people on the basis that they are in receipt of benefits.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
We strongly encourage landlords and agents to look at all potential and existing tenants in receipt of housing benefit on an individual basis and we will shortly be publishing a new How to Let guide to help landlords better understand their responsibilities.
Legislation exists to prohibit acts of discrimination against individuals in terms of age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the ministerial statement HCWS384 of 21 December 2017, what steps he plans to take to prevent onerous ground rents in already existing leasehold properties.
Answered by Dominic Raab
The Government response to the consultation on ‘ Tackling unfair practices in the leasehold market’ set out a range of measures to cut out unfair and abusive practices within the leasehold system. This included introducing legislation to prohibit the development of new build leasehold houses, other than in exceptional circumstances, and restricting ground rents in newly established leases of houses and flats to a peppercorn (zero financial value).
For existing leaseholders, the Government wants to see developer compensation schemes going further and faster, with support extended to all those with onerous ground rents, including second hand buyers and for customers to be proactively contacted. We will be keeping a close eye on progress and will consider measures that could be pursued to take action if necessary.
We want to make it easier for existing leaseholders to exercise their right to buy their freehold, or extend their lease, for this to be faster, fairer and cheaper, and to be available as soon as possible.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the answer of 27 December 2017 to Question 120298, what information his Department holds on the number of people that have died while sleeping rough in each of the last seven years.
Answered by Heather Wheeler
This department does not collect data on deaths of people sleeping rough. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why Government has committed to halving rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminating it altogether by 2027. We have announced a new Rough Sleeping and Homelessness Reduction Taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State, which will drive forward the implementation of a cross-Government strategy to tackle this issue.
We have allocated over £1 billion through to 2020 to prevent and reduce all forms of homelessness including piloting a Housing First approach for some of the most entrenched rough sleepers.