Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

I say to my hon. and, I believe, gallant Friend that I entirely agree that it is essential that people who have been through armed service for this country should expect not just to have the disadvantages removed of having been away, such as perhaps a lost connection with the local area, but to be positively advantaged. I reassure him that that is exactly what our policy is intended to do. I can tell the House that just this weekend the very first recipients under the Government’s new Firstbuy scheme, in which we aim to ensure that service personnel benefit, were Mr and Mrs Ferguson of Telford, who have just moved into a four-bed home. He was a military policeman in the Army.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

10. What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of selective licensing areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

The Housing Act 2004 requires local authorities to review the operation of selective licensing designations, and I certainly encourage them to do so. The Department has therefore not carried out an assessment itself of the effectiveness of those areas.

[Graham Jones]

The main problem with selective licensing, of course, is that it does not deal with stock condition, and we see many properties in selective licensing areas that are squalid. Can the Minister assure local communities that the Government will allow councils to include the most recent decent homes standard as a licence condition?

[Andrew Stunell]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has been very active on this issue, and I know that he has a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government next week, at which I am sure he will make that point very strongly. Licensing conditions are matters for local authorities when they draw up their proposals.