Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023 (Consequential and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024

Baroness Taylor of Stevenage Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to this instrument. I refer to my interests as recorded in the register.

We have been pleased to support the implementation of the regulation of social housing, including the revised consumer standards which will be required of landlords from April. The introduction of Awaab’s law is particularly important, as evidence of the harms of damp and mould continues to accumulate; as is the building safety work since Grenfell, although I think we all agree that it could be going more quickly, and we will continue to raise the issue that buildings under 11 metres are still not addressed. We look forward to further consideration of some of the key ownership issues when we debate the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill later this month. We totally support the principle that social tenants should receive and deserve the very highest quality in the homes they live in and the service they receive from their housing provider.

I am sure the Minister will be pleased to know that we recognise that these technical amendments are entirely uncontentious and will therefore not object to or raise lots of issues on them. However, it would be wrong in any discussion related to social housing not to highlight the ongoing funding issues facing councils, with their housing stock, and housing associations. For councils, the increasing burden of regulation—important as we all understand it to be—places an increased financial burden on them. With the capping of rent increases and the fact that in the current cost of living crisis any significant increase in rents would place an unmanageable burden on our tenants, the cost of meeting these additional regulatory burdens is a significant pressure. This is in addition to the costs of decarbonisation and retrofitting. While government contributions to this are welcome, at the current rate of funding it would take many decades to complete the work, well beyond the target for net zero.

Lastly, I take this opportunity to mention, as there has not been a chance anywhere else, the unfathomable decision that emerged from the small print of last week’s Budget—that the Secretary of State has terminated the ability of local authorities to retain 100% of right-to-buy receipts. This returns us to the awful travesty around right-to-buy sales. I take the example of my authority, which had a council stock of around 30,000 social homes, and now has only around 8,000. Some years ago, we were offered the opportunity to buy out our stock from the Government, which you could argue we already owned, but I will leave that argument for another day. We borrowed £240 million to do so, and that loan is being paid off through the housing revenue account. Not only does the removal of the 100% retention of receipts remove the resources we would have had to replace the homes sold under right to buy, but it also eats into the income stream we had to pay off the loan we had to take out to buy back our own homes.