Private Rented Sector
Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Frank Dobson(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood
My hon. Friend is exactly right. We do of course need to unlock the ability for small and medium-sized enterprises to get access to finance and to be building the houses that we want.
Many of my constituents, particularly those under the age of 35, would love to buy their own home, but they simply cannot get a foot on the property ladder. Young people who manage to buy often do so only with help from their parents, but in cities such as mine most parents simply do not have the level of savings that would be needed to help their children in that way. The Government’s failure on housing means that an entire generation in Nottingham could be locked out of home ownership entirely, left to cope with the insecurity offered by the private rented sector and facing rents that are expected to soar by an average of 39% by 2020. The Opposition are clear: if the private rented sector continues to make up an ever-increasing proportion of the market, we must ensure that it is fit for purpose, provides good quality, affordable homes and offers tenants the security they so desperately need.
Frank Dobson
In a great university city such as Nottingham, large numbers of people are graduating with phenomenal debts because of the massive increase in fees, and in many cases they have very little chance of getting what might be described as a graduate job. That adds to their problems in raising the money either to rent or buy and provide services to the people of Nottingham.
Lilian Greenwood
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend. One of the things that we would like to do in our city is ensure that more graduates stay in Nottingham and do graduate-level jobs, but their ability to buy a home is a really important part of that offer. Ministers should come to Nottingham and see for themselves the misery that is being caused by the status quo before attacking Labour’s plans to take action and tackle the issue head-on.
There are excellent professional landlords in Nottingham who take pride in the standard of accommodation they offer, but some do not, and it is important to stress that the management of the private rented sector is not simply a good landlord versus bad landlord issue. The sector is complex, and landlords come in many guises. In particular, there is an emerging need to target so-called “accidental” or “amateur” landlords who are new to the sector—those renting out an inherited family home, letting a property whose owners are in long-term care, or who have bought a house for a family member to live in with others. According to Rightmove, home owners letting out their property as a result of circumstance make up as much as 30% of all landlords, and many are casualties of the recession. Those landlords are often inexperienced and can be naive about the standards and management needed to provide quality, well-managed accommodation. With better advice, guidance and—yes—better regulation, we can help those people become responsible landlords who provide decent accommodation for their tenants.
Nottingham city council recently completed a review of property conditions in the city’s private rented sector and assessed the effectiveness of voluntary accreditation as a way of driving up standards. I agree that there should be greater national recognition of accredited landlords and the superior management and service they provide, but our local review concluded that although accreditation is an effective tool in driving up standards, on its own it will always leave a significant part of the market unprotected.
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) spoke about the way accreditation has been used in her city, particularly for students, and that is also the case in Nottingham. For other parts of the market, however, accreditation does not seem to work as well, and it remains a challenge to get landlords to join such schemes. That is why in Nottingham we have introduced an additional licensing scheme under an article 4 direction to manage the private rented sector better, especially in parts of the city with a high concentration of homes of multiple occupation.
Nottingham is a young city with almost a third of its residents aged 18 to 29. That high rate of young people can in part be attributed to the large number of students studying at our popular universities and colleges. The city’s growing student population has been the predominant driver behind the private rented sector’s wish to convert properties into HMOs, particularly in the Dunkirk and Lenton area of my constituency, but also in Radford, the Park, Wollaton Park and Lenton Abbey, which are close to the main campuses of the university of Nottingham. Uncontrolled development of HMOs has put pressure on the number of affordable rented properties suitable for families, and HMOs in high concentration have had an enormous impact on the resilience, balance, stability and sustainability of the neighbourhoods in which they sit.
People in my constituency who have campaigned on HMO-related issues believe that article 4 directions are still enabling HMO creation to take place, but in a controlled manner that benefits tenants as well as other residents in the neighbourhood. Accreditation and licensing are not mutually exclusive—they are complementary tools to improve standards.
The Nottingham experience indicates that the private rented sector, while needing to provide a professional service, is still not professional enough in its approach to rented accommodation, especially for students and other under-35s. In Nottingham that has contributed to the issues our city faces, but Labour’s plans would seek to address such concerns by providing more certainty, more stability, and greater protection for tenants and landlords alike.
Too many tenants and potential tenants face rip-off fees from letting agents. Landlords are being charged for services provided by the agent, and tenants are charged again for the same services. Despite facing fees averaging £355 every time they move, tenants continue to report difficulties in contacting their agents, and serious delays in getting repairs and maintenance completed. It is simply not good enough.
We need better management of the private rented sector, an end to rip-off agents’ fees, action to make three-year tenancies the norm, predictable rent rises, and more homes built to tackle the crisis in supply. Labour’s proposals have the potential to transform life for individual tenants and parts of my constituency that are suffering from the worst effects of the Government’s policies. It is astonishing that Ministers continue to oppose those proposals. Have they simply forgotten the thousands of people in Nottingham who are experiencing the greatest housing crisis in a generation? Well, we have not, and we will not.
Health and Social Care Bill
Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Frank Dobson(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Frank Dobson
No.
The Government have not made such a case for change. They have not convinced the 1 million-odd people in the national health service that these changes are needed, and if they cannot convince the people on whom the service is going to depend, they are taking a real chance with its future.
The Prime Minister attributes his commitment to competition, including outside competition, to some of the most worthless and shallow research that has ever been conducted at the London School of Economics—and that puts it in a pretty extreme category. The researchers said that they identified that hospitals they claimed competed with one another had achieved a 7% improvement in the period for which patients awaiting an operation had to wait once they got into hospital. A 7% improvement is a period of less than an hour. Then, without any justification whatever, they generalised from the particular and said that the hospitals they claimed competed with one other were 7% more efficient right across the board. It is on that basis that the Prime Minister says that he wants to introduce competition into our national health service.