Park Home Residents: Legal Protection

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That last point is really important because Sonia McColl did an enormous amount of good work on behalf of park home residents across the country. She was the victim of a vendetta and a serious crime and I have seen recent correspondence suggesting strong evidence against two potential perpetrators, but the prosecuting authorities are not taking the action they should be taking in that respect. As always, my hon. Friend makes a very good point.

May I refer to another site in my constituency that is now called New Forest Glen but is better known as Tall Trees, in Matchams Lane? No application has been received by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council for a caravan licence, despite more than 100 of my constituents living and having their permanent homes in Tall Trees park. I have been told by the council that officers from both planning enforcement and environmental health have met the site owners to try to regularise the situation on several occasions, but without success. They are now advising the site owners that they are considering formal action to secure the necessary permissions for both planning and site licensing. Although such promises of action are welcome, they must be considered in the context of many years of inaction during which residents of Tall Trees have been denied the rights and protection that would be available if they lived on a licensed park home site. These rights include the ability to form a recognised residents association and restrictions on the amount by which ground rents can be increased, and on service charges being imposed.

Silver Mists, New Forest Glades and New Forest Glen are owned by one organisation, RoyaleLife. In March this year, I requested through the representative of Mr Bull, the chief executive of Royale Parks, that he address the problem, especially on Tall Trees. I referred to the fact that despite being recognised by Christchurch Council as enjoying residential status for 12 months of the year, many of the residents of Tall Trees were still paying site fees of £4,750 per year as well as council tax. If they had the benefit of formal residential status through a site licence, their fees would be £1,900 rather than £4,750. By not even applying for a site licence, Royale Parks is benefiting by being able to charge much higher fees. Residents also suffer because they must pay VAT on those fees. That situation should have been brought to a head by the council taking enforcement action against Royale Parks for not having a licence, thereby forcing the company to comply with the law. In my letter to Royale, I suggested that a meeting between Royale and the residents—who have been trying to have such a meeting for many months—would be useful, and I hope that such a meeting will now take place on 11 October.

Last Thursday I received the latest word from the council’s corporate director for environment and community in response to the concerns that I have expressed on behalf of residents. It is not wholly reassuring. Although she says that she hopes the requirement for Royale Parks to regularise the situation and obtain the appropriate site licences or face formal action will provide some comfort to the residents, she could take action now to ensure that all those park homes for which residential use is recognised benefit from a residential site licence. I do not understand why the council has been so slow in acting against a site owner who is refusing to apply for a site licence. The site owner, unreasonably, is refusing to obtain a licence for the existing residential park homes, instead choosing to put pressure on residents to support his appeal in respect of other park homes on the Tall Trees development that do not currently have certificates of lawfulness or valid planning consent for residential use. Residents have been told that the site owner will address the issue only if the appeal against the refusal of certificates of lawfulness on other parts of the site are successful. In other words, residents are being held to ransom. Those appeals have been delayed inordinately, not least because the appellants want a full hearing.

I then got involved in writing to the chief executive of the Planning Inspectorate to see whether we could bring this matter forward. We now have an appeal fixed for 10 December, which is good news, but in the meantime, there can be no justification for denying Tall Trees residents, who are lawful occupiers of their caravans, the protection of a site licence.

People in Tall Trees who wish to sell their home are unable to get full price for it because of the constraints to which I referred. One constituent estimates that the value of his home has been depressed by £100,000 as a result of the site owner’s actions and the council’s refusal to take enforcement action.

So far, I have concentrated on cases where no site licence has been issued, but even where licences are issued they are often not enforced, leaving residents exposed to exploitation. One such site, in Ferndown in my constituency, is Lone Pine Park, which is owned by Premier Park Homes Ltd. Two of my constituents there have been harassed because their park home is old and regarded by the new owners as being out of keeping with the new image of Lone Pine Park, which is described in a brochure as offering

“bespoke homes…nestled within Millionaires’ Row in Ferndown …Dorset.”

My efforts to engage with Dorset Council on the concerns expressed by my constituents have largely fallen on deaf ears. I wrote to its chief executive, Mr Prosser, on 5 August, but despite repeated requests for a reply I received a response only very late yesterday evening. In my letter, I referred to: the failure of the owner to deposit new site rules; residents and the emergency services having restricted access to estate roads because of the construction of new homes; rodent infestation; the dumping of rubbish and waste; and the proliferation of potholes, which prevent the local general practitioner car service from accessing the site. The chief executive says in his answer that he understands

“that a new site licence has been issued”,

which provides the site operator with a number of permitted rights. He goes on to say:

“There are some outstanding matters which would require planning permission that are not covered by the terms of the site licence, and for this reason there is an open enforcement case on the site until such matters are regularised.”

Despite having had my letter for two months, he goes on to say:

“planning/enforcement officers will visit the site again to check the situation to ensure the site is not being operated in a manner that would breach the permitted rights under the provision of the site licence or the permitted development order”,

and that

“the enforcement file will remain open until the site has been regularised.”

I refer to that letter at some length because it seems to show that the council has a very relaxed attitude to these important issues, which directly affect so many residents.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a compelling case. One of the problems is that local authority officers have no experience in this area. It is vital that we give advice to residents nationally, because they are being penalised. Does he agree that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has to take this up as a matter of urgency?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely; the hon. Gentleman is right. Indeed, the British Holiday & Home Parks Association suggested that what we need in England is one centre of expertise that can not only give advice but take action on these matters, just as happens for trading standards and large companies that operate on many different sites. There is every reason for saying that we should do something similar in the park homes sector.

Social Housing

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and even more so to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). We might not agree on everything, but he always speaks with knowledge and passion about something that is close to him. We have a Southend theme in the Chamber, given that two of the four Government Back Benchers are from Southend.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who is a doughty champion of social housing, particularly council housing. It is a great honour to jointly chair the campaign with him and we have made some progress. We are pleased that the Minister is still in place, although he might have ambitions to move elsewhere. He does listen and he has acted. He has done some laudable things, in particular some of the changes to the viability assessment that are in train. I hope that he will listen to this debate and respond in due course—as he did to a number of us who spoke in Tuesday’s debate, of which this debate is part 2—on a specific aspect of the housing shortage, namely, the shortage of social housing.

I have limited time and will keep my remarks short, because other Members want to speak. I am indebted to my council in Stroud, in particular to Doina Cornell, the leader, and to Chas Townley, who chairs the housing committee, but also to the wisely named Pippa Stroud, the head of housing strategy, who deals with this problem day in, day out. I will say some things that are quite technical, and I make no apologies for that. I expect the Minister not necessarily to be able to answer them in this debate, but to take them away, to read them and then to talk to me privately or to reply in correspondence.

The biggest problem we face is that we want to build more social housing. We have a good record, for a small council. We have built 230 social units over recent years and have another 50 to 70 potentially in the planning process, some with the land already allocated. I do not want to go over the same ground as others, but as other hon. Members have said, land values are a significant problem and our biggest barrier in rural areas—I will be unapologetic in concentrating on semi-rural areas such as Stroud. The problem now is that the council has tended to max out the sites that it has available, either by reusing existing council housing that was unsuitable and therefore knocked down and replaced, or by using garage sites, which are terribly controversial. No one wants to use them for garages until someone wants to knock them down, when everyone then says that they are their most important asset. Some things become problematic when one tries to grapple with these issues.

No one has mentioned it yet, but I should advertise the Monbiot report, which Labour commissioned. People will take it to be a terribly political report, but I hope the Minister will look into it, because it contains some things that a Conservative Government could consider. We are in an era in which we are looking into how to value land properly and how to tax it and to encourage better use of it. We all have in our constituencies land that is used inappropriately that could be used for social housing.

Besides the lack of land, the biggest challenge or barrier we have is how difficult it is to bring brownfield land into use. All the subsidies have gone now, and the CPO process is so labyrinthine that most councils will avoid it or use it only as a last resort. We could do with powers to look into how to take land that is not being used appropriately into public use, not necessarily for social housing but certainly for affordable housing. Stroud is a classic case: we lose out badly where others outbid the council, and without the CPO powers we are unable to do something about that.

As I said, I wish to make some technical points about why we find it quite difficult to deliver more social housing, which I will include in the framework of affordable housing. We all know the difference between the two, but if we do not have more affordable housing, we will not get more social housing, because that is a key component.

Pippa Stroud has told me of the issue of vacant building credit. When a redevelopment is taking place, a credit is given against the floor area of the vacant building, and that element is then applied against an affordable housing element. The problem is that the way the process operates means that the affordable housing is rarely built. A good site has just come forward, but no affordable housing has been realised. That is frustrating, to put it mildly, because it should have been. If the process does not deliver affordable housing, it does not deliver social housing.

The Minister knows only too well about the viability assessment, which links in with our problem. I was pleased when in the previous debate the Minister talked about the problem we have with the local housing allowance. The Government are reviewing that issue, and I will take that at face value. It is an important issue in Stroud because it is in the same local housing area as Gloucester. Because our rents are much higher, my constituents end up having to pay more top-up. Therefore, they are often driven out of Stroud into Gloucester, or even further field.

On major sites, the current problem is that there is some incoherence in the Government’s national planning policy. This is an important issue in rural areas. Although we would call many of our sites larger sites, to my colleagues in rural areas they would be seen as relatively small sites. Nevertheless, they are important. The danger with such sites is that they can yield high value to the developer, particularly if they can say they will deliver so many affordable or, dare I say it, social units, but it does not quite work out as it should. Where we have designated rural areas and there are cash contributions towards rural housing, but not on that site, we need to make sure that this is bottomed out so that the money is used appropriately. I hope the Minister will look into how we designate a site. Even in Stroud, which is a semi-rural area, there are sites that are deemed not to be rural even though we would say they are very rural. I had an argument many years ago about post offices, because what I thought were some of our most rural post offices were designated as urban, for reasons that I never understood. There are arguments about how designation works.

Penultimately, there is an issue with the rural exception site cross-subsidy, which is a way to cross-fund affordable housing using market housing on the available rural sites. The difficulty, particularly for social housing, is that once landowners are given the notion that they could possibly provide more higher-end housing, it raises their expectations and it is much more difficult to bring them back to the reality of affordable housing, let alone social housing. Will the Minister look into the rural exception site cross-subsidy, because it is important? It is not right at the moment. There is no magic formula, although I wish I could give the Minister one. His Department will need to do some research to see how it can be altered, because there are some—I will not say abuses, but some opportunities that could be realised are not being realised.

I shall finish on the right to buy, which I hope we will suspend in semi-rural areas because we have lost so much of our good housing stock. I do not know whether the Government are rethinking this issue, with housing associations. It is galling that in a matter of time the 200-odd units that we have built could be bought and go into the marketplace. The most frustrating thing of all is when they are then fed back into the private rented sector, and there are sometimes two people next-door to one another and one is paying twice as much rent as the other. If they find out what their neighbour is paying to the council, those are some of the most difficult conversations I have, trying to justify that differential in the rent. We have to look into that, because it cannot be acceptable.

A lot could be done, but we are pleased that the cap has been removed, although it has not gone completely because there are obviously borrowing restrictions. We are keen to deliver social housing. We have a huge backlog of people waiting to be housed in Stroud. We can do our bit, but the Government have to help us. Otherwise, we will find that we are at the margins when we should be at the centre, dealing with our housing problem. As the hon. Member for Southend West said, it is a perennial problem, but it is acute at the moment.

House Building Targets

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) for introducing the debate. The Minister will no doubt know what I am going to talk about because we have talked about it privately, but I will put it on the public record. He has been very helpful in his response, but I hope that he will be a little more helpful.

Stroud District Council wants to build more affordable houses and is prepared to accept a bigger housing number overall. It is particularly proud of its reputation for social housing. The problem is that, as it currently stands, the methodology makes it difficult for us to meet the numbers that we are now required to meet, which are well above the numbers in the plan that we negotiated a few years ago.

The current methodology starts with the average level of household growth projected over 10 years, which it then adjusts based on a relative balance between median house prices and earnings, with a larger adjustment for areas with higher ratios. It then caps the level of adjustment to 40% above the housing requirements adopted in the post- national planning policy framework local plans. That sounds a bit like gobbledegook, but it basically means that, in the case of Stroud in Gloucestershire, we now face an increase on our local plan from 448 a year up to 635 a year, which is a 39.3% increase. Tewkesbury and the Forest of Dean also face large increases but, quite bizarrely, Gloucester and Cheltenham face a decrease. They have always been somewhat in parallel with Stroud, so it seems bizarre that we have come up with a methodology that affects us in that way.

One thing that the Minister could look at is the five-year migration flow, which seems to make a dramatic difference. We accept the uplift in terms of the household projections because we have a larger population, but the affordability ratio has taken us from 503 to 635 a year, and that matters, because that makes things more difficult, rather than easier. The numbers mean bigger sites. Some of our good, smaller sites are not being brought forward.

There is also the issue—as the Minister knows well—of the viability assessment. I went to a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group for housing and planning. I was pleased to hear the Minister’s officials say that they are looking carefully at that and intend to make it much more transparent, including publishing section 106s, which would be a very good thing, because we have always had our suspicions about what happens to those behind the scenes.

The additional problem is that we are still included within the same rent allowance area as Gloucester, which means that, because rents are higher in Stroud, people are faced with a top-up. I know that the Minister will not have the chance in this short debate, but I would appreciate it if he looked carefully at disaggregating rent level areas again, because otherwise it makes it punitive for those who want to rent in Stroud but cannot afford to pay the top-up.

In conclusion, we need to produce more housing. Everyone is pushing the Minister towards more housing. The Government have the laudable aim of building between 270,000 and 300,000 new homes. We will do our part in Stroud, but we cannot rely just on the larger sites. We have two bids in for the garden communities—I do not know if the Minister will address where those bids have got to—but I suspect that we do not have the capability or the capacity to deliver one of them, let alone both, because of the numbers required.

My plea to the Minister is to look at how the calculation has been arrived at, to give us more realism, so that we can play our part but do not end up with a huge shortfall, which will end up being hammered at the next local plan stage. That would seem unfair, given that we have tended to meet our level of housing in the past and would like to do so in future.

District Council Finances

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I congratulate my friend, the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), on such an excellent exposé of the funding of district councils. I am delighted to be part of the group and to have played a small part in an excellent report. I look forward to engaging with the Minister again, and with my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), so that we can at least bring attention to bear on this important topic.

In advance of the debate, I asked my district council in Stroud what main aspects it would like the Minister to look at. I pay due regard to the council leader, Doina Cornell, and the head of finance, Andrew Cummings; both contributed to an outline of what they saw as the main funding formula issues. It would be pointless to go over the same ground as the hon. Member for Rugby, but I will reinforce what he said, which was borne out by the Local Government Association and the District Councils’ Network, both of which made excellent reports to allow us to make our contributions today.

Stroud would like the Minister to dwell on four main points. I have a couple of subsidiary ones, which I will talk about at the end. First—overwhelmingly so—is the issue of uncertainty in the sector. Local government in general faces uncertainty about the future funding regime; the forthcoming spending review will obviously have an impact on the finances of the sector from 2020-21, but we are also not sure about the new fair funding review, the changes to the new homes bonus and the resetting of the business rates baselines—they will all come together. They could be good news, but they could put local government under even more pressure.

My district was in a sense saved by the Government’s decision not to pursue the negative revenue support grant. We are one of the areas of the country in the business rates retention pilot scheme, but that is coming to an end and I am interested to know the Government’s future thinking. That all adds to the mood of uncertainty, however, and such a background makes it difficult for local authorities to set budgets. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton will have things to say about that.

On resetting the business rates baselines, the Government have made it clear that that is the direction of travel in which they wish to go, but they have not quite said how they intend to get there. So much depends on how the moneys already there are redistributed, and that will have an impact on district councils because we tend to be at the end of the train, rather than driving it—some of us might hope for a much greater say in how things are going.

That level of uncertainty is multiplied by the potential changes to the new homes bonus system. In Stroud district, that contributes £1.8 million, which is a not inconsiderable sum, and one that is important in allowing us to balance our budget. Again, will the Government say what they intend to do? We are talking about what the changes will imply after this year. If some of the suggestions are implemented, sadly many authorities including mine stand to lose out very badly.

Another big bugbear is the limited ability of small district councils to raise money through council tax. District councils are limited to a 3% ceiling, whereas upper-tier authorities have been granted some dispensation with the social care precept. The police have also been allowed to raise a much greater sum. I am a great fan of parish and town councils, and one of the reasons I am a fan is that they set their own budgets; they take the responsibility and are not capped.

The result—I do not know whether this is the case in Rugby as it is in Stroud—has been some offloading of responsibilities on to parish and town councils. That might be laudable, because the idea of subsidiarity and running things as locally as possible has merit, but the problem is that parish and town councils might be running things because they have to, because the district councils simply do not have the resources—although that gets us to pay attention to the difficult scenario of the threat of closure of such services. The District Councils’ Network is therefore clearly lobbying for what is called a prevention precept—the hon. Member for Rugby intimated that—and it will be interesting to know the Government’s attitude to that.

On housing, quickly—I am mainly looking at the funding per se of the councils—there are problems. Stroud District Council owns its own stock; it bought it for some £97 million. We are proud that we have built something in the order of 230 new council houses, which is a considerable increase for a small district authority. We could have the argument about the right to buy, which some of us feel is a real disincentive, but the problem is that although notionally the Government have said that the cap on borrowing has been removed, real hurdles remain in the way of driving forward that programme. At the moment, therefore, we are at a standstill, which is really disappointing, because it would be the way to deal with at least some of our problems of homelessness and of other means by which people get into the housing sector. I hope that the Government will look at what is happening, and why there is not the drive towards what some of us want to see, which is council housing at least being part of the solution, rather than being seen as a marginal element.

I have a couple of final points to make. Planning is always a real bugbear, because we are forever expected to provide more housing, which is right, and more jobs, which is right. The problem is that there are not necessarily the means to do that. The Government’s formula means that Stroud is being asked to provide something like an extra 48% on top of its normal provision, and the question of how that will be done is causing real heartache in communities. There are very few ways in which the provision of services can be guaranteed if the housing is provided, so the Government need to look at their planning proposals. That is all bound up, because it affects the new homes bonus, which is the incentive, but if the funding is not carried through, there is very little benefit for local authorities and the people they represent.

Waste is a difficult issue. Stroud District Council has a proud record of collection. It is one of the greenest authorities in the country and has a good record for collecting food waste. I will not go into the politics of this, but we have a new incinerator about to go live and the county is starting to remove tax credits for recycling. That is totally bizarre, because we talk about the need to drive up recycling and to avoid waste. I could go on at great length about that; I have said many things in the past about it and no doubt will in future. Would the Minister look at some of the ways in which the smaller district local authorities are penalised by what I see as a mad dash towards incineration?

I share the desire of the hon. Member for Rugby to get this topic heard. It is a pity that a few more people are not in the debate. We are a bit of an endangered species because so many authorities are going unitary. I was talking to the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) about that, because in Bedfordshire they are in the process of doing that. I support unitary—the Minister responded to my debate on unitary—but until Gloucestershire grasps the nettle, we have to do the best we can for our district. Many people look to that authority for the bulk of their services.

I hope the Minister listens to the need for certainty and proper funding, and that he recognises that those authorities are doing valuable work on waste and new housing, and more particularly on the services that are so important to everyday life.

Local Government and Social Care Funding

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I absolutely recognise and accept that point.

The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) intervened to challenge the point about spending under the coalition Government. There was a crisis in public finances in 2010 which did have to be addressed, but I do accept that the balance between social care and the NHS was not optimal. I also want to address other areas where the underinvestment or disinvestment in preventive services has borne a heavy cost.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), who has done very good work on youth violence—I have been part of the commission looking at that—made the point that many of the preventive services that are there, particularly during teenage years, to stop the risk of young people slipping into gang violence have been stripped away in many of the poorest communities. Again, the impact of that has, at least in part—it is very hard to judge cause and effect—been an increase in violence on our streets at the awful and dreadful cost to many of those affected by it.

I want to turn specifically to social care. It is worth reflecting on why social care is so important. It is there to give people the chance of a happy life and a good life, as far as they are able to enjoy that if they are struggling with a range of conditions. It is there to help people to remain independent in old age, to support people so that they do not end up needing the NHS, with an enormous impact on their wellbeing. One of the problems we face is that unless you or a family member experiences the need for social care, it is hidden from view. Very many families across our country simply do not see the impact of the underfunding of social care today, but it is very real. There are over 1 million older people who are not getting the care they need. As Simon Stevens, the chief executive of the NHS, has pointed out on many occasions, if people do not get social care support, that has an impact on the NHS. The funding settlement for the NHS simply will not work unless we address the under-resourcing of social care.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

The right hon. Gentleman knows more about social care than anyone else in this House—I pay him that compliment. Does he accept that one of the most unfair issues is where local authorities have moved people with learning disabilities out to cheaper parts of the country—Gloucestershire being a classic case—and their care needs get worse over time? The local authority that moved them out says, “It’s not our problem; it is the problem of the local authority to which they have moved”. Does he agree that that is why we need a national care service?

[Norman Lamb]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the issue of how we care for people of a younger age who have care needs, particularly those with learning disabilities and autism. What happens too often is that those people end up in institutions when they do not need to be there, often away from home and at enormous cost to the public purse. Again, the evidence from around the country shows that where this is done well and where families are supported to keep someone at home, helping them through crises, we not only reduce the cost to the public purse but have a massive impact on their wellbeing. He is also right to highlight the fact that we end up with awful disputes about who is responsible for payment as people are shunted around the country in a way that, in my view, fundamentally breaches their human rights.

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered use of permitted development and the nationally significant infrastructure project regime for shale gas exploration and production.

First, may I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for this important debate, which I am honoured to lead? I also thank colleagues from all parties who have turned up to contribute, even though we have had a rather long and difficult week.

This debate follows two over-subscribed Westminster Hall debates. Last October, the Government consultations on giving shale gas exploration permitted development rights and classifying sites under the national significant infrastructure regime came to an end. The Government have yet to publish their responses to those consultations and are instead choosing to push the issue into the long grass. The first two Westminster Hall debates on this subject made one thing clear: Parliament has a view and would like to be heard. The proposed measures to give shale gas exploration permitted development rights and to classify sites under the national significant infrastructure regime are a bad idea for many reasons, but I shall focus on two central points.

First, to give fracking companies access to permitted development rights under the mantle of nationally significant infrastructure deprives local communities of a voice. Secondly, and even more fundamentally, fracked fuel is a fossil fuel. To support the new development of any fossil fuel is a travesty, given that the threat of global warming should urge us all to rethink completely how we produce our energy.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased that the hon. Lady has secured this debate and congratulate her on the way she has started it. Does she agree that the context of the Government encouraging fracking is bad enough, but the way in which they have treated renewables, by making them so difficult through the planning process and completely cutting away the subsidy regime, means that renewables are now at a standstill? It is a disgrace.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I could not agree more. We have such a long way to go before we become carbon zero and it is so important. What are the Government doing promoting fracked fossil fuel over renewables? We are living through a global climate crisis.

Rough Sleeping

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil Coyle]

My hon. Friend is right to be angry, and she is right to remember that this problem was being resolved. I remember cardboard city around Waterloo and Westminster in particular. The extent of the problem was reduced, and there was a good track record on it, but it is coming back.

The Government’s target is to halve rough sleeping by 2022. If the statistics are accurate and there was a 74 person reduction last year, there are another 2,376 people to go. At the current rate, it would take 32 years—three decades—to meet the Government’s target of halving the overall number. If anyone is struggling with the maths, that means it would take until 2051 to meet the Government’s 2022 target. That is not good enough, and I hope the Minister can tell us what she intends to do to boost action to prevent the problem.

If only as much effort went into tackling the problem as went into creating it, we would be in a better place. It did not come out of nowhere. Warnings were given by organisations such as St Mungo’s, but sadly they were not heeded. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, lots of issues contribute to the problem, but the warnings were there.

Destabilising the NHS with a wasteful top-down disorganisation that divided primary care trusts from social services, splurging millions in the process, prevented joined-up work to support people to manage conditions that are more prevalent among rough sleepers and the broader homeless population. When mental health services lose their staff and ability to intervene up front, more service users and survivors are forced towards the streets. When drug and alcohol cessation services are decimated, no solutions to addiction are provided. The “fend for yourself” attitude, which was proven previously not to work, has failed again since 2010. When funding for affordable house building is undermined, and when councils have their resources attacked and their ability to manage local case loads undermined, the outcome can only be more gatekeeping to services and a reduced ability to support people with genuine needs.

The benefits system has already been touched on. Attacking people who rely on our threadbare social security system, calling people “scroungers” and making it harder to claim—we heard about digital access and processes that force people out of the system before they get any support—creates problems. This Government have extended sanctions to even those with significant mental health conditions and other impairments. That is unacceptable. Deliberate delays are built into benefits such as universal credit. People now face a minimum five-week wait to get universal credit—according to Department for Work and Pensions figures, that target will not be met for 300,000 people this year—but when it first began in Southwark, the average wait was 12 weeks. That is three months without a penny coming in. Sanctions are also imposed for longer and to a greater degree than ever before. I am a member of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions; I recommend our report on that subject, which calls for a dramatic change to the sanctioning system.

When the DWP, under the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), scrapped disability living allowance and brought in personal independence payments, its own impact assessment stated that 500,000 disabled people would not qualify for support. Making it that much harder for disabled people to obtain basic funding—the average DLA payment was £3,500 a year—of course pushes more people towards the street. I should plug the Trussell Trust’s campaign to scrap the waiting time for universal credit. I encourage Members to sign up and support it.

Most organisations that work in this area have a long-term focus, and the Government should too. There has been only a 2% drop in rough sleeping so far, but will the Minister say how even that low level will be sustained if the pilots are temporary? I hope she will also tell us whether the funding for the schemes that exist—there are not enough—will be extended. We need an answer, because local authorities and organisations such as Shelter, which works with Southwark Council on this issue, need to know that they have longer-term funding. Their own sustainability is at stake. Without longer-term planning, I am uncertain whether we will halve rough sleeping even by 2051. I hope the Minister tells us how the Government intend to build on success in some of the pilot areas.

Lots of local authorities got in touch with me in advance of the debate. Last year, the number of households accepted as homeless was almost 60,000 in England, 34,000 in Scotland and 9,000 in Wales. Southwark is doing a lot of work on this issue, and it deserves credit for that. Southwark spends all its discretionary housing payment. It receives £1.3 million, and it all goes out—there is not a penny left—to try to support people to stay in their homes. It needs more. Southwark has trained all 326 councils on the Homelessness Reduction Act, and 271 councils have visited to shadow its service and learn how to operate in the HRA environment. Southwark has established both a London training academy, which has trained 1,000 council officers, and a rough sleeping training academy, which has trained the 81 councils across England that have the highest levels of rough sleeping. I acknowledge that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government funded that.

The Local Government Association got in touch to say that homelessness

“is a tragedy for all those it affects,”

and that rough sleeping

“is one of the most visible signs of the nation’s housing crisis.”

It estimates that councils provide temporary housing for more than 82,000 households, including 123,000 children. “Temporary accommodation” does not begin to describe the circumstances of some of those households. Children will have woken up on Christmas day with a shared kitchen or even a shared bathroom. How can families celebrate Christmas day when they cannot even cook their own food? That is an appalling set of circumstances. The number of people living in temporary accommodation has increased by 65% since 2010. In Southwark alone, 2,400 families are supported in temporary accommodation.

The Local Government Association estimates that the funding gap will be £110 million this year, and £421 million in 2024-25.

I will touch on dehumanisation. Last year a man died at Westminster tube station, right on the doorstep of this building. It got a lot of attention because of where it happened, but sadly it is estimated that 600 homeless people—600 people—died on the streets last year. We should be more shocked by this, not just because somebody died at Westminster and that case got more attention than usual, but because of the level of the problem and the age at which homeless men and women die, which is around 40 years old.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although we welcome the severe weather emergency provision money, which people in my area who run the shelter—largely the churches—get, the problem is that it is based on predictive weather planning? It is never easy for a volunteer to try to work out whether they are going to be needed on a particular night. Some of that money could be used more creatively for preventive work, to get people into accommodation before they need to go to the shelter.

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. The costs of getting this wrong are far greater than the costs of the up-front preventive measures.

The sector is unanimous, and it is a recommendation of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, that adult safeguarding reviews should become the norm for any adult rough sleeper who dies on the streets. We have them for children’s services, but there is not an automatic assumption that they will be done for adults, and there should be. A review should be done in a no-blame culture, so we can identify what interventions might have helped to prevent that death on the streets. I hope the Minister will commit to that today.

I have an example of a really difficult case. A woman whose sister had died in Ghana came to my surgery. The day she left to go to her sister’s funeral, she wrote to the police, the council, the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, the GP and others begging for help for her grandson. She had looked after her grandson as he grew up—his mum had died and his dad was never on the scene—for as long as she possibly could. However, his mental health had broken down and his behaviour became too much, so he was supported elsewhere, in sheltered accommodation.

What happened next was tragic. The grandson was not getting the mental health support that he needed. His behaviour became erratic in the shelter and problematic for other residents, and he was evicted. He was beaten to death in Walworth. He had stolen someone’s bike and pawned it, and the people he had stolen it from found him and beat him up, and he died. The morning his grandmother got back from Ghana, the police knocked on her door to tell her he was dead, despite the fact she had begged everyone to provide an extra, small intervention that could have prevented such an awful occurrence. Personally, I think the mental health services should have done more in that case, but we need to learn from incidents like that, to make sure that all avoidable deaths are actually made avoidable.

There is a question mark: are homeless people worth less, somehow? They have been made to feel that way. Being homeless is a dehumanising experience and the lack of human contact—even eye contact—is something that comes out in homeless group sessions, when we talk to homeless people directly.

There have been some bizarre policies. At Poole Borough Council the solution to rough sleeping was to introduce public space protection orders, which imposed fines on homeless people. Unsurprisingly, those fines were not paid when the council attempted to impose them, because homeless people do not have much money. It was a bizarre attempt at policy, but perhaps not as bad as the Cardiff Conservative councillor, Kathryn Kelloway, who was so outraged at the indecency and indignity of homelessness that she called for homeless people’s tents to be torn down—not because they had new homes, but just to take away their tents. That was shameful. She was suspended by the Welsh Conservatives, but less well publicised is the fact that she has already been readmitted, which speaks volumes.

Perhaps I have talked for too long, but I want to touch on some other issues. The private rental sector is the fastest growth area for people becoming homeless. Lots of organisations, some represented here today, are calling for no-fault evictions to be scrapped and section 21 reformed. There are lots of reasons why I want more rent controls and longer tenancy agreements to try to prevent some of this, as well as an increase in expenditure on help to rent, to try and get more people into the sector where possible.

Hon. Members have already referred to domestic violence, which I will touch on. The Government statistics, which I have taken from the House of Commons Library briefing, are astonishing. From April to June 2018, 4,500 households were owed a statutory homeless duty where the reason for losing their last settled home was

“violent relationship breakdown with partner or associated persons.”

That is 8% of all households owed homeless duty. The Women’s Aid annual survey 2017 found that housing was the most frequent co-presenting issue for women experiencing domestic abuse, above health, justice, finance and children.

The crisis in refuge funding has been driven by the demise of the Supporting People programme. If there is one specific programme that should be rebuilt, it is that one. In 2015-16, one in 10 homeless acceptances were due to domestic violence. Half of St Mungo’s female clients have experienced domestic violence and one third said domestic violence had contributed to their homelessness.

There is an issue around the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017. Fleeing from domestic violence does not automatically make women a priority need. They still have to meet the vulnerability threshold in the legislation to meet the criteria for assistance. That needs addressing, because councils are getting this wrong. The Women’s Aid project No Woman Turned Away looked at the reasons given to women for not getting homelessness assistance—we should think about the circumstances in which councils are doing this—which included the woman needing proof of abuse. Some women were deemed to be intentionally homeless as a result of being beaten up by a partner. That is not an acceptable excuse to try and deny someone the support they need. Some were even told to return to the violent partner, rather than get help from their council. Those circumstances must change.

The “no recourse to public funds” policy is completely unacceptable on every level. Either we believe in human rights or we do not. NRPF denies people equality of opportunity and rights to family life. I will give some examples, but for those who do not know, let me first explain that it used to apply only to illegal immigrants to the UK—to those who had no lawful reason to be in this country. The coalition Government, to their shame, then extended it to families, including those with British-born children; there are now 50,000 British-born children, born to parents legally in this country, who are not entitled to any public support. The circumstances into which those families are driven are horrific, and in some cases they are the result of Home Office error.

On Monday, Mr Musari sent me a message. I am godfather to his son; when we first met in 2015, he was about to become homeless. He had been working, paying tax and paying private rent, but the Home Office told him to stop—apparently we did not want him working, contributing or paying tax—and he was made homeless while his wife was pregnant with their third child. They were put through the wringer so much that he nearly killed himself; he said that he thought his children would get more help if he were dead. Only on Monday, almost three years later, was the decision finally overturned, granting him access to public funds—it has taken that long to correct a Home Office error.

Let me give one more example from my constituency. A woman was told seven years ago, in court, that she had a criminal record and did not meet the “person of good character” criterion, so she would be denied access to public funds. She has just got her new biometric card, but it has taken until now to overturn the decision, because it was a case of mistaken identity. She has never committed a crime, in this country or anywhere else—not so much as nicking a pint of milk of from a supermarket, which I am sure we have all done. She too has been through the wringer: she and her son, now 10, were made homeless and were reliant on friends and family. That boy was three years old when this situation began as a result of a Home Office mistake.

The all-party parliamentary group has made recommendations, including reinstating access to legal aid so that people in those circumstances do not have to wait three and a half years, or seven years, to overturn awful erroneous decisions by the Home Office. It is unacceptable. The Zambrano restrictions, which deny people access, should be lifted for anyone with a dependant. No child should be put through this process as a result of where their parent may have come from.

It is completely unacceptable that Surrey Square Primary School in my constituency has 40 children in those circumstances. If my daughter Esme were old enough, those children could have been born in the bed next to hers in St Thomas’s hospital, but they are denied access to the same support that Esme might qualify for. The children get this. They understand how unfair it is to victimise their classmates and friends. The Government are missing what this divisive and horrific policy is creating in our schools, especially in areas such as my constituency.

I will touch on the criminal justice system, which a couple of hon. Members have already mentioned, and the cost of getting this policy wrong, with specific reference to criminal justice. I hope the Minister sees her role as a cross-Government one, because there is not just one solution to this; it touches on many other areas. The cost to the taxpayer of getting this wrong is extortionate, through councils, the NHS and mental health services, which we have already talked about. Rough sleepers experience higher levels of certain health conditions that result in hospitalisation, and that is not free.

The response to a question I put to the Ministry of Justice revealed some figures that I think are shocking. The total number of people going into prison has fallen slightly since 2016, but the proportion of homeless people going to prison has risen from 23% to 27%.

Economic Growth: South-west

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Devon (Sir Gary Streeter) on leading this important debate.

There is no hiding under a bushel the importance of the south-west. Its economy is bigger than that of Greater Manchester and twice that of Birmingham, contributing £127 billion per year to the UK economy. It is a diverse region, with great cities such as Exeter, Bristol and Plymouth, great agriculture and one of the highest rates of tourism outside London. However, as the hon. Members for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) emphasised, the benefits of that are not shared equally by all.

The south-west evokes cream teas and coastline pleasures. Rodda’s renowned clotted cream, with the jam above or below it, is of course manufactured in Cornwall, along with Ginsters famous pasties. However, we must not forget the industrial heritage that the region shares with the north-east. It was Dartmouth’s Thomas Newcomen who invented the steam engine, perfected by Richard Trevithick, although it took a Geordie, George Stephenson, to bring about the first commercial train journeys. Happily, we can take joint credit for the renowned Peter Higgs, of Higgs boson fame, who was born in Newcastle but went to school in west Bristol.

The bedrock of industry in the south-west lies in food, farming, fisheries and tourism—sectors that are due to be disproportionately affected by Brexit. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Torbay and Devon are all in the top 20 areas where people work in tourism for their first or second job. Some 32% of marine fishing occurs in the south-west, meaning that, if a bad Brexit deal affects the Budget promise of £10 million for fisheries, that will be of great significance to the area.

The Government’s strategy on Brexit does nothing to protect small-scale farmers in Devon and Somerset against the massive American agro-industrial machine. May I ask the Minister how the Government expect those small farmers to compete with American wheat farms the size of small counties and pig farms the size of small towns, without ruining the glorious beauty of the south-west countryside?

Bristol is home to the largest aerospace cluster in the UK, with firms such as Airbus and Rolls-Royce having to stockpile parts in the face of Brexit uncertainty. In the last month, Airbus has warned once again of the impact of a no-deal Brexit. Its supply chain crosses the channel several times, meaning that any friction at the border will cause substantial problems for the company, which employs 3,000 people in Filton in high-skilled, high-paid jobs that are key to future economic growth. How does the Minister plan to protect those jobs?

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise for not being present earlier; I have been on a Delegated Legislation Committee—some of us spend a lot of time on those. Does my hon. Friend accept that Airbus is to the south-west, particularly my part of the south-west, what Nissan is to the north-east?

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank my hon. Friend for emphasising the importance of Airbus to the south-west; I absolutely accept that point. The warnings of industry leaders and companies such as Airbus and Nissan need to be taken seriously by the Government, and listened to.

As the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) emphasised, the south-west has one of the highest skills gaps in the UK, with a third of all small and medium-sized businesses having difficulty hiring people with specialist skills. That will only worsen after Brexit, if the Government press ahead with plans to slash so-called low-skilled immigration. Businesses will be even harder pressed to find and retain labour, as we have heard.

More than that, the south-west has been a major beneficiary of EU funding, receiving the second largest share of regional development funding and social funding. The key economic hubs of Bristol and Swindon are among the largest UK recipients of Horizon 2020 research grants, from which we get more back than we put in. After the UK leaves the EU, that hole will be filled by the Government, but the existing institutions exhibit the kind of south-eastern bias that means that, for example, the south-west receives half the per capita UK Research and Innovation funding that London got in 2016-17. How will the Government ensure that funding is replaced in a way that does not exacerbate regional inequalities?

At the heart of all those challenges is the need for a strong, positive industrial strategy, capable of building and rebuilding the economy to meet the challenges of the future and of Brexit. Unfortunately, we have seen no evidence of one. Labour has the answer. [Laughter.] Hon. Members should listen. We are committed to raising spending on research and development to 3% of GDP by 2030—an additional £1.3 billion in public investment. That will get us part of the way, and will certainly benefit the region’s burgeoning tech industry, which grew 47% from 2014 to 2016.

Much of that additional spend will draw on our industrial strategy, which is about investing in areas such as nuclear power as part of our commitment to low-carbon energy, ensuring that we have the skills for Somerset’s Hinkley Point.

Local Government Funding

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) on securing this debate, and I thank her for her remarks. It is fair to say that she has covered a full gamut of aspects of local government. Like her, I pay tribute to the many thousands of councillors up and down the country who work tirelessly in their community as public servants, delivering some very difficult portfolios and in some very challenging parts of the country. At this time of year, councils across the country are in the process of finalising their budgets for the next financial year, which is why the hon. Lady’s debate is so timely.

My constituency covers three lower-tier authorities—Braintree District Council, Colchester Borough Council and Maldon District Council—as well as an upper-tier authority, which is Essex County Council. I pay tribute to all my colleagues at all the authorities, particularly Essex County Council, who are faced with a number of pressures, including growing demand on services—it is a theme that no doubt we will hear throughout the debate—and the overall impact of the Government’s financial settlements on them and on councils across the country. My colleagues at Essex County Council work very well with the Local Government Association, which has campaigned clearly and robustly on areas where more needs to be done. There is always scope for innovation, efficiency and transformation. Naturally, these local councils look to central Government to provide more certainty on the future of their finances and the level of support they receive from the Government.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that one way central Government give certainty is by letting authorities that had the benefit of the retention of business rates know what the Government’s plans for the future are? At the moment, it is very uncertain.

[Priti Patel]

I will touch on business rates later. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and councils need to be getting on with their own plans.

With the comprehensive spending review taking place later this year, rate reform and the fair funding review—I know the Minister is well aware of this—the Government have the opportunity to consider carefully the various submissions and representations from local authorities. Compared with other local areas, we are underfunded in Essex not just through local government, but through our police and health services. I very much hope that the Minister and the Government will be sympathetic and understanding, and that they will use this as an opportunity to rebalance resources towards our county, particularly our county council, which has the responsibility for adults and children. Essex County Council is experiencing considerable budgetary pressures, which the Government will know about from the various representations that my colleagues across the county and I have constantly made to the Department.

Essex faces significant financial challenges in adult social care, which accounted for 45% of the council’s total spend, with a budget of £646 million in 2017-18. The council is collecting over £82 million in fees and charges from residents, but budgets are being squeezed and it already faces demographic pressures and challenges. The number of people aged over 80 is set to grow over the next decade by 61%, and those over 90 by 100%. The council is facing rising costs as it seeks to provide support to around 4,000 residents with learning disabilities, including cases that are very complex to resolve. Its objective is to provide those residents and all citizens with a good quality of life.

On top of those pressures, provider costs for care packages are increasing while the supply of beds and residential accommodation by providers is falling. Some 362 beds were lost to the market in 2018 as seven care homes closed, and contracts from domiciliary providers have been handed back. These are continuous pressures on funding social care. We know that money has been put aside for social care, which is of course welcome, but it is not meeting the growing pressures and demands in Essex and around the country, too.

I hope to work with the Government and my councils to look at how we can constructively address these pressures and constraints. The council faces pressures on education and special needs in addition to social care. I appreciate that this issue rests primarily with the Department for Education, but resources are being squeezed and I have many concerns. I have a vast number of constituents coming to me, and it is pretty clear that their needs, challenges and concerns are not being met in the way that we as a Government would like. The council has been proactive in its own representations to Ministers, and I very much look forward to the Government working with it.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston made a strong and important point on public health. Across the country—I see this in Essex—we are seeing pressures on public health. We can do much more to prevent many of the pressures on A&E, our hospitals and GP surgeries. One of the greatest challenges that we face, which relates directly to planning, is that the population of my constituency, and the number of houses, is growing. We have to meet those challenges by ensuring that the right kind of support goes into public health and infrastructure provision, so that we can get a new health centre for primary care in Witham and invest in our roads and in other aspects of local amenities and public services, too.

I come back to the point on education. When the provisional settlement was announced last month, Essex County Council was very keen to ensure that it was part of the pilot round for local business rates. It was pretty disappointed not to be, and I make a plea to the Minister for some kind of reconsideration or to ensure that Essex features in future schemes.

Essex is a county that constantly innovates. We want to strive for excellence while delivering value for money and meeting our service requirements to deliver to the public. There are endless pressures. Across the county of Essex, there are some big challenges that we want to work on with central Government to look for innovative solutions and ideas about how we can address many of those concerns.

Deaths of Homeless People

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the health issues that the hon. Lady highlights, and I was pleased to visit Bristol a few weeks ago to see new provision that has been put in place. This is about providing support and opportunity, and once someone has taken up that help and got into accommodation, we must address and respond to their needs there. It is also about the prevention agenda, and I will continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Care to respond to the important points raised by the hon. Lady.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State talk to colleagues across the Government about public institutions that release people on to the street? I recently had a case of someone who was released from a secure mental health institution on to the street, and he ended up in prison. Does the Secretary agree that it cannot be right for public institutions not to check where someone will live when they leave that institution?

[James Brokenshire]

I do, and the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which was championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), is about that duty to refer, and the obligations on public bodies to consider the issues raised by homelessness. The hon. Gentleman highlights a point about custodial settings, and we have pilots in three prisons, supported by the Ministry of Justice, to ensure that someone who is released on a Friday evening when housing services are shut does not simply go out on the street. We must break that and stop it happening, and I take very seriously the point raised by the hon. Gentleman.