Baroness Gardner of Parkes
Main Page: Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Conservative - Life peer)Housing and Planning Bill
Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts“Overcrowding in shared residential buildings
(1) Local authorities may set limits for the number of residents that may lawfully reside in each rented property in a shared residential building.(2) Local authorities may set limits under subsection (1) for each relevant rented property whenever the contract for renting the property changes at any point after the day on which this section is brought into effect.(3) If a complaint is made to a local authority about overcrowding in a rented property for which a limit has been set under subsection (1), the local authority may investigate whether the limit is being exceeded and, if so, order the landlord of the property to take action to end the overcrowding.(4) Where the local authority orders a landlord to take action under subsection (3), the local authority may charge the landlord a fee to cover the reasonable costs of the investigation and action undertaken by the local authority.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, while the House is reorganising itself, I, too, would like to welcome my noble friend Lady Hanham back. She has done much in this field over the years and we have appreciated it. I also remind the House that my interest is declared in the register.
My amendments are fairly straightforward and should not require too much elaboration. They attempt to restore some of the properties, conveniences and protections that were exercised by local authorities before the Deregulation Act. That Act deregulated at a time when New York and Paris were regulating. We lost all control of who was living anywhere, as a council or an authority power. I think that it is very important, particularly at this time, in two respects. The first is where rogue landlords are filling substandard properties, with people crammed in—I am told that three-tier bunks are being used and £70 per night is being charged. I would not swear that it is £70 per night; that is hearsay or press report and I have no idea of what is really being charged. But whatever it is, it is too much for a property where there are no facilities and no possibility of people living a normal life.
That is one group of people. The other group is people concerned with holiday lets. I have explained in the past that I know of these personally, in a block where I have a flat. Ten people are flown in under the Airbnb banner for a one-bedroom flat, and those 10 people take over so many of the facilities, including hot water and the general convenience of getting in and out. Security doors are left open. Councils and landlords have no control over them whatever, unless they can prove that these people exist. Unless, therefore, the council has some idea of who is in occupation or has the right to investigate if there is a question raised by other people, there really is no way of dealing with it. Amendments 98 and 99 are designed to deal with these problems. I beg to move.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of these Benches, I support Amendments 98 and 99 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. We are all familiar with some of the hair-raising examples of how many people have been found in some raided properties. Recently, in Newham, seven people were found in a windowless basement. Overall, there were 26 people in that three-bedroom house. In another recent raid, 47 people were found in a property intended for nine. This level of overcrowding goes beyond any notion of civilised accommodation. Issues such as affordability, illegal lettings, economic migrants and particularly the acute property issue in London all impact on these kinds of properties. That is why we on these Benches support the amendments.
When I worked for Shelter in 1985, we campaigned hard for the Housing Act, which covered some of this area. But clearly we now need to update the legislation, in particular because, even if the percentage of overcrowded accommodation has stayed reasonably static, the net amount is increasing because the private rented sector is increasing, and as the private rented sector grows, this becomes more of a problem. For those reasons we support the noble Baroness’s amendments.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that detailed answer. I feel that she has not covered a couple of points. One was that local authorities say that it is impossible for them now to know how long anyone is in the short lettings—the Airbnb-type lettings—which are available for only so many days in a year. As local authorities have pointed out, how can you possibly know how many days in the year they are being occupied in that way if you have no idea who is in them? In the past, they had the right to go and check that.
There is another point that the Minister has not really covered regarding some local authorities. I would point out the difference between Westminster and, for example, Kensington and Chelsea. Westminster used to use six full-time agents to go and check which people were in a place and for how long—it cannot do that any longer. Kensington and Chelsea says that it cannot afford to do that. The point covered in my amendment was that the local authority would be able to charge a fee to the landlord for the purpose of going. I would like to be reassured by the Minister that the Government will look at the regulations as to how that cost can be covered in such a way that local authorities will not be heavily out of pocket if they attempt to do many of the things which, as she acknowledged, are desirable. If I could have an answer on those points, I would be grateful.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
If the landlord is a rogue landlord and the local authority is investigating, it can recover the costs.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
That does not really answer the point because I was not talking about a rogue landlord; I was talking about people doing holiday lets and who were therefore time limited on how long those could be. There is no way at present of checking how that time applies. I am sorry to be complicating life for the Front Bench.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
As I said, the key issue is that where there is overcrowding, particularly within a flat, it could be considered within that case that there was a rogue landlord and, in those cases, local authorities can recover the costs.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
We are going nowhere on this because I am getting answers to the other half of the question and not the half I am asking about. But there is probably genuine good will on the part of the Government and I therefore ask the Minister to say that they will look at the regulations on this and see what can or should be done in the future.
“Changes to leases: qualifying threshold for right to manage
(1) Where leaseholders in a shared building have the right to manage and a beneficial change or modification is proposed to the terms of the leases in relation to communal services or general safeguards held in that shared building, the change shall be agreed and made if a simple majority of the eligible leaseholders vote in favour of the proposal.(2) In respect of a vote under subsection (1), a leaseholder shall —(a) have the right to appoint a proxy to vote on his or her behalf; and(b) be given adequate notice of when the vote will take place.(3) A change to the terms of the leases under subsection (1) may include leasehold enfranchisement.(4) If a leaseholder or his or her proxy fails to participate in the vote held under subsection (1) and reasonable arrangements have been made to enable him or her to do so, he or she shall be deemed to have voted in favour of the proposal.”
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, this is an issue about which I feel quite strongly. I cannot understand why in order to get the right to manage, which is set out in statute, you require 50% of the leaseholders to agree, but having got the right to manage, you cannot do anything very significant to deal with any problems in a building unless you have 100%. I have tabled Questions about this and at least four different Ministers have conceded that 100% is totally impossible to obtain. I welcomed my noble friend Lady Hanham earlier; she was one of the Ministers who said that to me. It is good to see her here and means that I do not have to prove my point about the statements, although the Library came up with these quotes for me, and I can certainly prove the point.
I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. When I raised the issue about people who fail to respond in any way and said that they should be deemed to have supported a proposal, he said—I am not using his words; I cannot quote Hansard exactly—that that might not be a bad way of dealing with what is certainly a growing problem, particularly in central London. In a number of blocks, perhaps not a majority but certainly a significant minority of the flats are in foreign ownership or owned by people who simply do not want to know whether the building is falling down around them. In rare cases, a rather ill-intentioned landlord may be hoping to make the place unliveable so that he can get all the tenants out and sell the skeleton building on for a lot of money. I have encountered that.
It is therefore very important that we find a way of dealing with this, and one way would be to reduce the percentage required for it. I suggested a simple majority; I appreciate that that may be too simple but there must be somewhere between the simple majority and the impossible total. The Government must agree to look at that. I will not be satisfied unless they agree to look at it, because this issue is getting worse.
Amendment 102 is grouped with this, but it is on quite a different subject. Would the Front Bench like me to speak to both now? The Whip nods his head. Amendment 102 is on the totally different issue about sinking funds for repairs, and it probably also applies to the type of block I was speaking about before. It has come to my attention through people who bought their council flats in the days of Margaret Thatcher; they have therefore owned them for a long time, and they find that their income has got less as they have got older. I can quote the case of a woman who wrote to me, whose total income is £10,000 a year. She has just had a bill for the roof repair, and her contribution as a leaseholder is £12,500. I followed this case up with the Hastoe Housing Association, which now has the property—it was originally local authority-controlled—and it said, “We’d like to be able to help, but this case is one of 26 cases where people are in exactly the same position”.
Where people buy their leasehold in a block where most people are tenants, whatever the tenants have to pay should be built into their rent and therefore at a level which is possible for them to manage. Instead, people can suddenly find themselves with only the old age pension and they get a whacking great bill for something to be done to the property. I have known other cases where the payment required was much higher than £12,000; sometimes the contribution to the roof or to replacing all the windows is £30,000.
People need to have a sinking fund from the time they buy the leasehold or, if not from that time, at least from the present time so that they will be gradually building up at least a little something towards the costs. I hope that the housing association or the local authority would then be able to exercise a degree of judgment and try to retain those people who have already lived in those flats for so many years. It is therefore very important that the Government are willing to look at these two quite different issues in Amendments 101 and 102. I beg to move.
Baroness Maddock (LD)
My Lords, I have spoken only about twice on this Bill but I must declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I support the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. She has been a doughty campaigner on leasehold. Over the years several of us in the Chamber, including the noble Baroness who has returned to us today and, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, have tried to grapple with the issue of leasehold. The legality of it is incredibly complex and the Labour Government tried to do something about it. I remember spending hours on the last leasehold reform Bill, and some of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, has talked about today came forward in that Bill. At the time, we said that we were not happy about some aspects of it but we really needed to look at what was happening and review it over time.
I appreciate that a review of leasehold legislation is probably something that the Government do not want to go near. It is incredibly complex but, given that a lot of building has gone on in London and a lot of the new flats are leasehold, this is an area that we need to look at. Because it is so complex, some leasehold landlords can use the legislation to disadvantage leaseholders—sometimes financially and sometimes making them powerless to do anything about what goes on in their building. This is an important area and, as I said, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, because she has been a doughty campaigner on it over the years. I recognise that these amendments relate to matters that the Government probably do not want to look at, but I share her view that they really need to look at least at the issues that she has raised today. They need to be reviewed and revisited.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
If the House will indulge me, that offer is welcome, but it is fair to say that no one could accuse either this Government or previous Governments going back many years of any haste in dealing with these matters. I hope that we shall finally see some progress.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, the comments that have been made are very interesting and I am grateful to all those who have given their support. However, we tend to overlook the fact that there are now something like 6 million leaseholders, so we are not talking about a little subject. It is a pretty big one that is important to a great many people. It cannot just be brushed aside as something that it would be nice to do.
I would love to see a completely new consolidation Act for all property issues; I raised this at a meeting where I was asked to give a speech. I said that people should write to their MPs and press for one. A man who said he was a member of the Law Commission made it clear that the commission does nothing for nothing now, so the only way you could get it to prepare a consolidation Act, which it often used to do in the past, is by pre-paying for it. Some Government must decide that it is time to put all property legislation, which keeps a lot of solicitors happily and expensively employed referring to Act after Act with each one changing the previous one, into one Act. It is all piecemeal and there is no cohesion. Those 6 million leaseholders and the multiplicity of legislation are big problems for us.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, said that this might well be a growing problem, and I think he is right. Foreign ownership and the fact that so many people are having to move out of London because service charges are too high are the reasons for these issues. What the Minister had to say was very good, but he has not really given an indication that he will say anything before Third Reading, which is coming up pretty soon. What I would like to hear from him is that he will look at another approach, either through regulations or in some other way, to deal with this. That, at least, would put his good intentions on the record. As I say, it is important that these issues are not just pushed aside, which has been the case too many times when I have raised them. This basically applies to the situation as set out in Amendment 101.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I hope I have reassured my noble friend that we want to look not just at the content of these two amendments to address these and related issues—the Minister, my noble friend Lady Williams, has been nodding her head. It is also clear from this short debate that we are not in total agreement on how these matters should be tackled. The noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Kennedy, had some views and I respect the views of my noble friend Lady Gardner, but it tells us that we are not ready to rush into legislation on these important matters. I hope my noble friend will agree that it is right to take these matters outside the Chamber and have a thorough discussion.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
Is my noble friend saying that it might be possible to deal with these issues through variations in regulations? If so, is he prepared to look at that?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I did not say that and I would not want to give any guarantees before Third Reading, but I have guaranteed to meet my noble friend the Minister outside the Chamber to look into these issues.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
It sounds as if there is a bit more interest than there often is on this subject. People have been excellent in clarifying and supporting this. We heard the technical side from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, which is very valuable—think of what you would pay for his professional opinion on that; we have had the benefit of it for nothing. The Minister is well intentioned, as was my noble friend in responding. On that basis, this is too big an issue to try to put into the Bill, which is already enormous, but it must not be overlooked. We must come back to it. For that reason, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.