Planning for the Future
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
I would like to make a statement expanding on the housing measures set out in yesterday’s Budget. I have deposited a document in the Library setting out our vision for the future of the planning system.
A home is so much more than four walls and a roof. It is about security, a stake in our society and investing for our future. The expansion of home ownership over the 20th century created a fairer Britain, with prosperity and opportunity spread more evenly. That is why this Government believe in supporting people who are working hard to own their own home, and ensuring that young people and future generations have the same opportunities as those who came before them.
We are making progress. Last year, we built over 241,000 homes—more new homes than at any point in the last 30 years—taking the total delivered since 2010 to 1.5 million. The proportion of young homeowners has increased, after declining for more than a decade. Yet a great deal more is required to be done. Many are still trapped paying high rents and struggling to save for a deposit. Home ownership seems like a dream that remains out of reach. Our children should be able to put down roots in the places where they grew up, but the simple truth is that too many will continue to be priced out if we do not build many more homes and take the action now that is required to remove barriers to people getting on to the housing ladder.
To achieve this, the Government are prepared to take bold action across the board. We will be introducing a building safety Bill to bring about the biggest change in building safety for a generation, and a renters reform Bill to provide greater stability to those who rent. We will be making sure that those in social homes will be treated with the dignity and the respect that they deserve through our social housing White Paper. We will be working hard to end rough sleeping. We will be bringing forward an ambitious planning White Paper in the spring to create a planning system that is truly fit for the 21st century—a planning system that supports the delivery of the number of homes we need as a country, but homes that local people want to live in, with more beautiful, safer and greener communities.
The way we work and live has changed beyond recognition since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. The planning system has not kept pace. We intend to change this, so we will be reviewing our approach to planning to ensure that our system enables more homes to come forward in the places that people most want to live, with jobs, transport links and other amenities on their doorstep. This means making the best use of land and existing transport infrastructure.
To that end, I am announcing that we will review the formula for calculating local housing need, taking a fresh approach that means building more homes, but also encouraging greater building in urban areas. We will make the most of our transport hubs, and I am announcing a call for proposals to invite innovative solutions for building housing above and around stations. We will be backing brownfield sites for development, and we will work with ambitious mayors and councils of all political persuasions in all parts of the country. We will be beginning by investing £400 million to regenerate brownfield sites across the country, and we are launching a new national brownfield sites map so that anyone—member of the public, entrepreneur or local authority—can understand where those sites are.
Local authorities need to play their part through their local plans. Today, I am setting a deadline of December 2023 for all local plans to be in place, before the Government will have to intervene. In addition, in the coming months, through the White Paper, we will lay the foundations for a modern, dramatically accelerated planning system. This will be a digital planning system that harnesses technology for the first time, and one where it is far easier for local communities to play a real role in the decisions that affect them, shortening and simplifying the plan-making process. As part of that, we will reform planning fees and link them to performance to create a world-class and properly resourced planning service. We will explore the use of tools such as zoning, and for the first time we will make clear who actually owns land across the country, by requiring complete transparency on land options. Where permissions are granted, we will bring forward proposals to ensure that they are turned into homes more quickly.
We are not waiting for the White Paper to begin our actions. We are encouraging local communities to take innovative routes to meet housing needs in their areas through new planning freedoms, and we are also introducing the freedom to build upwards on existing buildings. Today I am announcing a new right to allow vacant, commercial, industrial and residential blocks to be demolished and replaced with well-designed, new residential units that meet high-quality standards, including on new natural light standards. We are granting permission to get building across the country.
We know that we need to deliver at scale, and at a pace that we have not seen in recent years, and yesterday’s Budget set out that those vital planning changes will be underpinned by serious additional investment. The £12 billion that we are putting into affordable homes represents the biggest cash investment in the sector for a decade. We are finalising details for a new affordable homes programme, which will deliver homes for social rent, as well as for affordable rent, shared ownership and supported housing. There will be a route to ownership for all, regardless of the tenure at which people begin.
We are taking an infrastructure-first approach and yesterday £1.1 billion was allocated to build new communities and unlock 70,000 new homes in total. That is more than £4 billion invested through the housing infrastructure fund. Building on that, we will introduce a new long-term flexible single housing infrastructure fund of at least £10 billion.
I have made safety a personal priority of mine since I became Secretary of State last year. With that in mind, the Government are bringing forward the most important improvements to our building safety regime in a generation, and I am pleased that, as the Chancellor set out yesterday, in addition to the £600 million already made available, there will be an extra £1 billion to make buildings in the social and private sectors safe. I am pleased that in the private sector that investment will benefit leaseholders, many of whom I met recently, and I fully appreciate the pain and stress that they have been through by feeling trapped in their homes.
In line with our commitment to end rough sleeping, we are putting in more than £640 million over this Parliament for new “move on” accommodation, and vital support for substance misuse services. That work will be spearheaded by my Department, and by the new and urgent review I have set up, which is led by Dame Louise Casey.
I am also mindful of our huge responsibility to future generations, and to ensuring that as we build more, we also build better. That is why I will be updating the national planning policy framework to embed the principles of good design and place making. As recommended in the recent report by the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, we will introduce a “fast track for beauty” and mandate that tree-lined streets should be the norm in this country in future.
We are backing a broader green revolution, including plans to establish a net-zero development in Toton in the east midlands, which I hope will be one of Europe’s most exciting new environmentally sustainable communities. We are seeking to establish similarly high-quality and environmentally sustainable communities through up to four new development corporations in the Oxford to Cambridge arc: around Bedford, St Neots and Sandy, Cambourne, and near Cambridge.
We should seize this opportunity to consider how the built and natural environments can work together more harmoniously, and in that spirit, I will be reviewing our policy to prevent building in areas of high flood risk. Given the recent devastation suffered by so many of our communities, we are putting an extra £5.2 billion into flood defences.
The real work begins today. Over the spring and the summer, I will work with local authorities, SME housebuilders and larger developers, local groups and, I hope, Members from all parts of the House. Our mission is clear: we will build more homes, we will help more people on to the housing ladder, and we will do our duty to future generations by ensuring that those homes are built in a way that is beautiful and sustainable, creating a legacy of which we can all be proud. That is what it means to level up and to unite our country. I commend this statement to the House.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement, which arrived half an hour ago.
This is indeed a follow up to the Budget and the Treasury’s flawed thinking runs throughout. After nearly 10 years there is still no plan to fix the country’s housing crisis, while the promise of the White Paper is a threat to give big developers a freer hand to do what they want, ignoring quality, affordability and sustainability. Of course planning requires reform, but planning is not the major constraint on the new homes the country needs when 365,000 were given permission last year and only 213,000 were built; when only 6,200 new social homes were built last year when more than 1 million people are on housing waiting lists; and when, of course, big developers can dodge all planning permission to
“abuse permitted development rights to provide accommodation of the lowest quality.”
Those are not my words, but those of the Government’s own Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission.
The Secretary of State has a number of questions on the planning front. In 2015, the Government set a deadline of early 2017 for all councils to have a local plan in place. Why is he now waiting another three years until the end of 2023? Will local areas have social housing targets, not just total targets, in this review of the formula for local housing need? Will new standards be set for greener zero-carbon homes? How much extra funding will the Government provide to beef up the capacity of our council planning services, which have been cut by a half over the past decade? The White Paper is a red warning. It could strip local communities of the powers they have to say no to big developers taking the easy option of building on the green belt. It could impose Whitehall’s total housebuilding numbers on local communities without the new affordable housing that local residents need. It could mean more unsuitable business buildings turned into slum housing, with no planning permission needed at all.
We welcome the new money in the Budget for replacing dangerous cladding and I welcome the Secretary of State’s personal commitment to building safety. Since the weeks immediately after Grenfell, we have argued that no resident should have to pay simply to make their home safe. Only the Government can fix this problem. It is a profound failure that thousands are in this position nearly three years on from Grenfell. How many fire risk buildings will this new fund have to cover? Will it fund essential fire safety work to retrofit sprinklers? Will he guarantee that this fund means no leaseholder will now have to pay the costs to make their buildings safe?
The Secretary of State’s Department released new building safety figures just over an hour ago, which he has not mentioned this morning—and no wonder. Nearly three years on from Grenfell, 266 high rise blocks still have the same Grenfell-style ACM cladding. The Secretary of State has still not published the test results or the numbers of those blocks with unsafe non-ACM cladding. The existing fund for private sector ACM cladding has already been in place for 10 months, so it is clear that funding alone will not fix the problems. Will he now also back Labour proposals for simple emergency legislation to force block owners to do and pay for this work?
Finally, with one or two minor exceptions, yesterday’s Budget was a golden, but wasted opportunity on housing. When the Government’s borrowing costs are at rock bottom and the Chancellor promises a capital spending spree, the Secretary of State must be deeply disappointed by how little funding he has for new affordable homes. Over five years, there will be just £12.2 billion, and a quarter of that is not even new money. This means an average of £2.4 billion a year. In real terms, that is only half the level of affordable housing investment made in the last year of the last Labour Government. Over five years, it will be less than housing organisations—from the National Housing Federation to Shelter—say is needed every year. Will he concede that on housing, it will be business as it was before the Budget—a continuation of 10 years of Conservative failure on housing, with no plan to fix the housing crisis—and will he admit that despite the Chancellor’s constant Budget boast on housing, this is a Government that do not “get it done”?
Robert Jenrick
We built more homes in this country last year—240,000 homes—than were built in any of the last 30 years. The right hon. Gentleman left house building in this country at the lowest level since the 1920s when he was the Housing Secretary. Today, it is at the highest level for 32 years. We have built more affordable homes in this country on average since 2010 under a Conservative Government than under the last Labour Government. We built more council houses in this country in one year last year than in the 13 years of the last Labour Government combined. In Wales, which Labour has control of, how many council houses were built last year? Fifty seven. How many the year before? Eighty. How many in the three years before that? Zero, so I will take no lectures from him on our record.
This was a great Budget for housing. We saw the largest investment for 10 years in affordable housing—over £12 billion. We saw further investment in infrastructure to unlock homes in all parts of the country and the commitment to bring forward a new larger single housing infrastructure fund later this year. As he rightly pointed out, we saw a further £1 billion investment in building safety, which is an incredibly important step forward to give safety, security and confidence to leaseholders who are feeling concerned in their homes. Together, this package will help us to lay the foundations for the housing reforms that we intend to introduce during this Parliament and which the White Paper that I will publish later this year will take forward at pace.
The right hon. Gentleman asked me a few questions, including about the affordable homes programme. This has been welcomed by everybody in the sector, including Kate Henderson, who leads for housing federations—she warmly welcomed this. The housing and homelessness charities welcomed the announcements that we made as a very significant step forward in investing in this area.
We have also announced more money for brownfield land, so this is not about the ruination of the countryside or needless urban sprawl. It is about getting more homes in the places where they are most needed and backing ambitious councils and Mayors such as Andy Street in the west midlands, who want to get going and unlock the parcels of brownfield land.
The building safety fund will be open as soon as possible. We want to work with leaseholders who are in properties over 18 metres and ensure that they can access the funding.
The right hon. Gentleman asked about the publication of the Building Research Establishment’s research. That will happen in the coming weeks, but the research is already available; it is simply that we have not consolidated and published the final findings. We do not expect those findings to be any different from the ones that are already in the public domain.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asked about legislation, as he did the other day, and he did not listen to the answer then. We will bring forward our fire safety legislation in the coming months, and I hope, from what he said today, that he intends to support it. That will give the powers to fire and rescue services across the country to do exactly what he wishes.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Even if the shadow Secretary of State does not, may I warmly welcome the new money for affordable housing? I ask the Secretary of State to make sure that some of it finds its way to innovators such as the National Community Land Trust Network and the Right to Build Task Force, because the new ideas that will help us to change our whole approach to how we do housing are coming from them.
Robert Jenrick
I do support groups such as community housing organisations—I know my hon. Friend has an Adjournment debate later today to which the Minister for Housing, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) will respond—and we want to ensure that they are properly resourced to take that forward. We want to help smaller communities, particularly in rural areas, to build small numbers of homes—five, 10, 15, whatever might be appropriate for their community—through rural exception sites and the other things he has championed over the years, such as self-building. We will bring forward more measures in the White Paper to help facilitate that.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
There are many things in the statement that I welcome and which I am sure the Select Committee will welcome and will want to look at. Shortly after Grenfell, the Select Committee recommended that all cladding not of limited combustibility be taken off existing high-rise buildings and banned from new buildings, and the £1 billion is a step in that direction, but we will want to analyse whether it is sufficient. On the planning review, in the past the Committee has suggested a comprehensive review of planning, particularly of the changes since 2010. Will the review look at what has worked and what has not worked with regards to the changes and also at the recommendation of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission that there be reform to the permitted development system to ensure minimum standards? Finally, will the Secretary of State have another look at reform of the Land Compensation Act 1961, which we suggested, so as to run down the cost of land, which is an obstacle to development? On the housing needs assessment reforms, which again I welcome, the first changes the Government made actually shifted development from the north to the south. Will he look at whether the system should not be going in reverse and trying to level up by putting more development into the north?
Robert Jenrick
I will pay close attention to all those points. Everything the hon. Member listed is within the scope of the planning White Paper, and I would welcome his views and those of the members of his Committee. In reviewing local housing need, we will take account of the need to level up and rebalance the economy, both geographically, from the south to the north, and between areas—for example, by trying to ensure that cities that have depopulated in our lifetime can have more homes built in them to get people and families back into and living in some of our great cities where sadly fewer people are living now than 20 or 30 years ago. I welcome the work he did on the building safety fund, and I hope this will now make a significant difference in helping leaseholders, particularly in private buildings, move forward. We have also opened it up to the social sector, because some housing associations, particularly small ones, and some smaller councils do not have the finances readily available or the ability to borrow to do the work now required. This fund will be open to them to do that, so money should not be a barrier to their moving forward with the remediation works required.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
As the Secretary of State is aware, I have been much involved in reform of the planning system under previous Governments, and I urge him to be radical when he produces his White Paper. I am glad he has retained his commitment to involve local communities. Strengthening the role of neighbourhood plans against the problems put in their way by district councils would be a very good way of taking that forward.
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is evidence that some local plans have been undermined and that the hard work put in by local communities has not reaped the benefits those areas would have liked—they can spend years creating plans only to see development happening on other sites, not those they have chosen themselves. We are reviewing that, taking examples from across the country where we think that has happened and trying to learn lesson from it, and I hope that will feed into our work and create a strengthened plan-making system in the future.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The built environment and planning professions have a core role to play in tackling the climate emergency, yet in his statement the Secretary of State made only tangential mention of the climate emergency. I gently say to him: he will not achieve a green revolution with one single net-zero development across the whole UK. Can I encourage him to think again about this most urgent of challenges, to enshrine the climate emergency as a core purpose and responsibility of the planning system and to set the highest possible standards for net-zero development across our planning system to ensure we are not building new homes that will need to be retrofitted in the future?
Robert Jenrick
We are committed to a green revolution in the housing industry. We are doing that in many different ways, most notably through the future homes standard, which we have just consulted on. We have received more than 3,000 responses and will bring forward our final proposals shortly. We have consulted on a substantial reduction in CO2 emissions in new homes of between 75% and 80%. I do not want to pre-empt what we might choose to do, having listened to the views in the consultation. However, the evidence that we saw prior to the consultation was that that was the most credible reduction in CO2 emissions that we could deliver across the whole of the country, although some parts could go further and faster if they chose to do so. We are listening to the responses, and I want to see the industry respond, change and have much higher levels of energy efficiency and to see new heating systems come in as quickly as possible.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Supply alone will not solve all the affordability problems in the housing market. It will require intervention, such as his excellent First Homes initiative. Will he consider extending that initiative to directly commissioning first homes on public land and perhaps combining First Homes with Help to Buy to further improve the affordability of home purchase?
Robert Jenrick
That is a very interesting idea, and one that I will give careful thought to. My hon. Friend and I worked together on the creation of First Homes, and I am very grateful for his views on that. He is absolutely right that this will require both supply and demand-side reforms. That is why the planning system is so important in unlocking more land in the places where people want to live, but it is also important to have ways of getting people on to the housing ladder, and First Homes is just one of those options. It will enable people in their local area to get 30% discounts on new homes. I recently met the major house builders, who are fully supportive, and I hope that we will see those homes on the market in this country by the end of the year.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that we are building at some of the lowest densities in Europe, which is causing us to have to build on floodplains—although I appreciate what he said earlier. If we are really talking about sustainable development, surely we have to build at density in and around our towns, as opposed to allowing the spread into our rural communities.
Robert Jenrick
I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that that is what he took away from the tone and substance of my earlier remarks. In reviewing the planning system and how we calculate local housing need, we will be trying to push development towards urban areas and existing clusters, and away from needless urban sprawl and the ruination of the countryside. We will be using the planning system to encourage that. Some of the planning freedoms, for example, will help people in their everyday lives, allowing them to extend their own properties or build upwards on their homes, and allow entrepreneurs to buy derelict, disused buildings and turn them into housing, to get housing going in towns and cities at a pace that we have not seen for many years.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
On Monday, the Select Committee on Housing, Communities and Local Government heard some rather extraordinary claims from certain London councils about the cost of building council homes in London. My right hon. Friend’s announcement and the Budget are an excellent start on building new council homes. Can he set out how many council homes he expects to see and what safeguards he will put in place to ensure that those council homes can be brought under the right to buy and that the receipts from right to buy are then reinvested in new housing?
Robert Jenrick
The new affordable homes programme, which we announced yesterday, will be over £12 billion. We have not yet finalised the details, but will set them out shortly. They will show the proportion of those homes that will be for different tenures, from shared ownership and affordable rent to social rent. We want a significant increase in the number of those homes in the social rent category. I hope we can make a positive announcement on that shortly, when we have finalised the details, having spoken to and listened to the sector.
I am very sympathetic to the argument that my hon. Friend has made in the past about properties that are not eligible for right to buy and, indeed, about some councils and housing associations that are making it more difficult. I would like to work with him to take action on that. We need to ensure that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, takes housing seriously. As I have said before, we will never be able to meet our housing targets and ambitions as a country unless London pulls its weight, and I am afraid that at the moment we have a Mayor whose ambitions are way below what we should all be expecting at every level of the market. As long as he continues in place, which I hope is not for very much longer, the Mayor needs to get building in London.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State has just been talking about the delivery of homes for social rent, but I would like to ask him about the impact of two of his Government’s policies on the delivery of homes for social rent. The first is yesterday’s changes to the Public Works Loan Board when it comes to the delivery of homes for social rent by local housing companies. The second is the First Homes policy, which, because it is delivered through section 106 as it is currently designed, is likely to lead to a reduction in the production of homes for social rent by local councils. What is his response?
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady will know as a follower of Treasury matters that what we announced yesterday in the Budget with reform of the Public Works Loan Board makes it cheaper for councils to borrow to invest in housing and regeneration. I hope that she will support the changes that we made. The changes we are making to the PWLB will make it harder for councils to waste money on speculative investments outside of their boundaries and get highly indebted, and make it easier to spend money on things that really matter. We have lifted the housing revenue account borrowing cap, and many councils across the country are responding to that and building council houses at a pace that we have not seen for many years, as was reflected in the statistics I gave earlier. We built more council houses last year than we have done for many years, and I hope that her local council in Oxford will do the same, if that is what she wishes.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. It is absolutely right that we look afresh at the planning system, and I am so glad that he is doing just that. My right hon. Friend knows a great deal about the challenges that new-build housing can create for existing communities as well as for owners. What more can he do to ensure that developers properly consider the rights and needs of local communities, as well as of the new build home owners, which are often impacted by their behaviours?
Robert Jenrick
Quality is extremely important, and we have seen evidence of poor-quality development in this country in recent years, including by some of the most prominent house builders. That needs to change, and if we are going to reform the planning system to make it easier to build, then house builders must respond in turn by ensuring that homes are well designed, safe and environmentally sustainable. My hon. Friend has seen examples of poor practice in Telford and has campaigned on that. We are placing the new homes ombudsman on a statutory footing, and that will ensure that anyone who purchased a home has a proper system for redress if the usual complaints mechanism of the house builder does not suffice. I hope that that will see a big change in the quality of output from house builders very rapidly.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
The car valeting site in Tottenham Hale, the illegal waste tip in Hillingdon, the tip in Ealing that is inaccessible: what happens to these ungreen green-belt sites that could provide a million new homes close to London train stations? Any London MP knows that we desperately need such homes for people who may never be able to afford to buy.
Robert Jenrick
There are sites like that in all parts of the country. It requires good local councils and, perhaps in this case, the Mayor of London, to get involved and to help unlock the land for development. I appreciate that there can be complexities in many cases, not least with illegal waste sites, for example. We created a fund in the last Budget to tackle that—a £20 million fund that perhaps the hon. Lady would consider bidding into. We announced in this Budget a £400 million fund to unlock brownfield sites, and that will be available for ambitious Mayors and local councils across the country to bid into very shortly. I hope that she will take us up on that.
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
I welcome the wide-ranging initiatives in the statement, particularly the potential for four development corporations on the Oxford-Cambridge arc. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the pressures on public access to public services, particularly GPs, where there are significant increases in housing demand, especially in my constituency. Will those development corporations have specific accountability for filling gaps in access to public services? If not, what measures will he take to ensure that there is better co-ordination?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend understands this issue well and has represented two constituencies with very serious affordability issues, but where there is also a great opportunity to build housing. We need to ensure that that is done in a very sensitive way and that the infrastructure flows with the new housing. That is the objective of creating the development corporations, which will be partnerships between the local community and the Government, and we hope that this will be well planned, environmentally sustainable, good quality, beautiful housing and that the services—GP surgeries, schools, roads, utilities—flow with the housing and meet the demands. I really hope that I can work with all of those communities to ensure that they are great successes.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
I welcome the £1 billion cladding fund that was announced yesterday. It is a start but, as the Secretary of State knows, the devil is in the detail. May I encourage him to set up a contact group with representatives of leaseholders, freeholders, managing agents, fire services, local authorities, mortgage companies and his officials, perhaps chaired by the Housing Minister, to work through that detail so that it does not take another two and a half years for all the unsafe cladding to be removed?
Robert Jenrick
I welcome the work my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister has done on this issue, and I will take that away. We want to work progressively with all the stakeholders. We have built an effective operation on ACM above 18 metres in recent months. We have named contacts for all the buildings, and all, bar a very small number, now have plans to remediate.
By opening the fund’s scope much more widely to other dangerous materials above 18 metres, we will have to put in place the same procedures for those materials to understand exactly where the buildings are, to understand who are the right people to work with us and to make sure that work is tendered for and that workers get on site as quickly as possible. That will be a very complex piece of work. At the moment, it can take up to six months to get workers on site to do ACM remediation, and some projects can take up to two years to complete. I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge, but I am keen to work with anybody who is interested to make sure it begins as quickly as possible.
Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
A sense of place informs our personal and communal sense of worth. As one of those who served on the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, I welcome this statement and, in particular, the Secretary of State’s commitment to a fast track for beauty. In considering these matters, will he also look at sprawl and out-of-town and edge-of-town developments, both in retail and housing? If we can revitalise and rejuvenate our town centres, it will refresh the spirit of our people.
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend is heavily involved in the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, and I commend its superb report to anyone interested in these issues. One point it raises, which we will now be taking forward, is the need to mitigate against the urban sprawl and the damage to the countryside we have seen over the past 50 or 60 years and more.
The answer to that is gentle density in urban areas, building upwards where appropriate—perhaps where there are existing clusters of high-rise buildings—and, building gently where building upwards is not appropriate. There are plenty of examples in the report of where that can be done in an attractive way that local communities could support. We need to ensure more homes are built in our town centres and around our high streets. The high streets and town centres fund that we have created through the £3.6 billion towns fund provides funding to many parts of the country to do exactly that.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I look forward to the forthcoming building safety Bill. As the Secretary of State knows, homebuyers in my constituency have had some very poor experiences of safety issues in their new homes, but can he explain how the Bill will bring about not just tighter regulation but culture change in the industry, upskilling of the workforce and adequate resources for enforcement and local authorities?
Robert Jenrick
All those things need to happen. We are undergoing the greatest change in our building safety regime in most of our lifetimes. That will take time and will require a significant change in the culture of the industry. The new regime, which is now being established in shadow form and will be legislated for later this year, will place new duties on those involved in the construction industry and on those responsible for looking after buildings once they have been built.
An individual or entity will be criminally responsible for safety, from the moment construction begins, throughout a building’s occupation, many years into the future. That will be managed through our building safety regulator, which will sit within the Health and Safety Executive. The HSE has a lot of experience in this field and has seen significant changes and improvements in safety in other fields, such as oil and gas, in our lifetime.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
To keep families together and strengthen our communities in Guildford and Cranleigh, it is vital that we can ensure we have the right homes in the right place at the right price. What plans does my right hon. Friend have to make it easier for people to get on the housing ladder in their local area?
Robert Jenrick
Part of the answer is building more homes in the places where they are most in demand. That will be at the heart of the reforms we will bring forward, and my hon. Friend represents an area that is in great demand. Some of the freedoms that we are encouraging—to build upwards gently and to reimagine town centres and high streets—will ensure that more homes are built sensitively in places such as Guildford, but we are also bringing forward a fleet of policies to help home ownership. One of them is our First Homes policy, which will enable local first-time buyers in her area to get a 30% discount on their first home. We are also looking at long-term fixed-rate mortgages, so that it is much cheaper and more certain when you are taking out your first mortgage. Of course, the Help to Buy scheme and our existing home ownership schemes have helped more than 600,000 first-time buyers on to the housing ladder since 2010.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right to acknowledge the anxiety for leaseholders living in blocks with unsafe cladding. Will he confirm that it is his intention that no leaseholder should have to pay for the replacement of cladding on their block? How long does he think it will take before all the unsafe cladding on residential buildings around the country above 18 metres has been replaced?
Robert Jenrick
We will publish shortly the exact details of the new scheme, but it is our intention that it will be available for both the private and social sectors and that this will encompass all unsafe materials above 18 metres for what are commonly considered high-rise buildings. I would like it to include those buildings that are just below 18 metres, because there are some buildings where there has been a gaming of the system by some developers, such as the building in Bolton, for example, that was 17.8 metres. There will be a small degree of flexibility to resolve that issue, and this should enable no leaseholder to be trapped in their building. The funding should be available for all who require it, and, as I say, in the social sector it will be available to the relatively small number, but an important number, of housing associations and councils that do not have the resources available to do the work themselves.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
The Secretary of State is right to say that under the planning system there should be a presumption not to build on green fields or on floodplains and that there should also be environmental sustainability. Does he therefore share my concerns that the west of Ifield Homes England development represents none of those criteria?
Robert Jenrick
I am aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to those proposals and I am happy to continue to work with him to ensure that Homes England answers his questions and refines the schemes as much as possible to try to meet the concerns of the local community. I hope more broadly that the announcement I have made today of a review of how the planning system interacts with floodplains and the increased risk of flooding that we are seeing in many parts of the country will be good news to those parts of the country that have seen floods in the last few weeks, and that we can bring forward changes in the coming months.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The money allocated in the Budget for cladding removal applies only to buildings over 18 metres, and the Government guidelines issued in January say:
“We strongly advise building owners to consider the risks of any external wall system…irrespective of the height of the building”.
Consequently, any leaseholder in a low-rise building is struggling to get approvals to sell, to get a bigger share of the property or to remortgage. What are the Government going to do about that? Those leaseholders are currently marooned.
Robert Jenrick
The fund that we have announced this week is for high-rise buildings, and that was on the advice of our expert panel and Dame Judith Hackitt, who has advised the Government for some time and is helping to set up the new building safety regulator. The expert advice is that height is the main factor in determining safety, but it is not the only factor, and that is why earlier in the year I set in train work on what other factors we should be taking into consideration. It is none the less the most important factor as far as we are guided by advice. For buildings below 18 metres, which will not be eligible for the fund, we will continue working with lenders and insurers to get the market working faster. The new form that has been created in partnership between the Government and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors appears to be working in some cases, but not in all, and we need to make sure that that happens faster.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
Inexplicably, the Mayor of Greater Manchester has delayed the publication of the spatial framework to build on local green-belt land until after the mayoral election in May. In the meantime, what can my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State do to stop speculative applications on the green belt, such as that in Bredbury Parkway in my constituency?
Robert Jenrick
I am very aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to this plan and that of many of his colleagues—I would say Conservative colleagues, but it is not even exclusively Conservative colleagues. Indeed, I believe the shadow Secretary of State is opposed to Andy Burnham’s plan. It is clearly not proving popular in my hon. Friend’s part of Greater Manchester. We will have to see what happens in the mayoral elections, but I am sure my hon. Friend will campaigning strongly to protect the wishes of local people in his community.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The announcement on the new cladding fund is welcome, but it remains to be seen whether it will be sufficient to cover all the issues that have been talked about today. I have a specific question about the detail. Leaseholders are paying an awful lot of money for waking watches at the moment. Will that be reimbursed as part of this fund?
Robert Jenrick
The fund will operate like the 18-metre ACM fund, in that it will be available only for the costs of the remediation works themselves, not for any service charge fees that might be incurred in the interim. We want to see this work done as quickly as possible, because I am very conscious of the fact that those waking watches are causing meaningful costs to people. There are cases where people are finding it extremely difficult to meet those costs.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s words on the presumption of brownfield development. Will he give me an assurance that councils such as Aylesbury Vale District Council in my constituency, which are high in the league table for new-build housing, at significant loss to our countryside, will not be pressured, so long as we bring forward all of the brownfield developments in Buckinghamshire?
Robert Jenrick
We want to support and reward the many councils across the country that are making often difficult decisions to allocate land, aggressively build out brownfield sites, re-imagine town centres and, above all, meet the local housing need of their communities. We want to encourage those that are failing to meet the housing needs of their communities to take such a lead, because it is not fair that people are not able to live and bring up their family in their own communities. That causes housing pressure to be pushed out to other areas, perhaps such as the one my hon. Friend represents, forcing the building of even more homes and putting even more pressure on local services and the countryside in some parts of the country, particularly in the south-east.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Building can go ahead if action is taken to address potential flooding risks: more retention ponds or reservoirs to keep water on adjoining lands; and the planting of willow trees—the willow absorbs moisture and water, and can be cropped and harvested. That will involve a concerted partnership between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to preserve the environment. Will that be done? Will we have a good, sensible, intensive planning strategy now, for the future?
Robert Jenrick
Absolutely. The Environment Secretary and I will be working closely together as we see what further steps might be needed in the planning framework to ensure that homes are built in the right places. The planning system today seeks to do that, but clearly we have seen examples in recent weeks and months where it has not succeeded, and so some change may be required now, particularly as the flood risk facing some parts of the country appears to be more regular and more acute than we have ever known it.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly his comments about wanting more people to live in safer, greener, beautiful areas—I am sure we would all welcome that. Some people are fortunate enough to live in such areas already, and they will be concerned about over-development. Will he assure me that they will be fully consulted? One route is a local plan, which he referred to, but many councils struggle to meet the deadlines. Will he assure me that help will be available to councils to meet those deadlines?
Robert Jenrick
Yes, there will be. We want to find a better plan-making process. Plans are taking too long and we would like not only the time taken to produce them to be reduced significantly, but for people’s views to be genuinely taken into consideration. We are also, through our new digital agenda, seeing whether there are ways in which that can be done in a much more modern, 21st-century manner, on people’s smartphones, so that their views can be taken into consideration.
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that even more needs to be done to ensure that developers are accountable and that local communities are empowered even more to be centrally involved in the decisions made in their area? Will he be willing to meet me to discuss the Westferry Printworks development application, which he approved on 14 January?
Robert Jenrick
I or the Housing Minister would be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss that matter. I believe it is subject to a judicial review, so it may not be possible, but I am happy to consult my colleagues in the Department to see whether it is appropriate for me to meet her at the moment.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that one reason why the number of completions quite often does not meet the number of consents is that there is a problem in getting utilities to sites. He is absolutely right to point out that much has changed since 1947, including the way we build houses and the developments in modular building. Will his planning review specifically look at those two issues? That would allow us to meet the desire of the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) to align completions and consents.
Robert Jenrick
Absolutely. A lot of important work has been done on utilities, not least by the National Infrastructure Commission, and I would like to take that forward. On the broader challenge relating to modern methods of construction, that will absolutely be at the heart of not just the planning work we are going to do but our broader housing strategy. There is a huge opportunity for us as a country to lead the world in new construction technology and to build good-quality homes at pace. I really want us to take that forward.
Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)
To discourage the needless urban sprawl on our green belt, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to encourage councils to unlock unused brownfield sites first and to work with SME builders, rather than moving toward huge green-belt release and working with large developers?
Robert Jenrick
We absolutely we want to have a brownfield-first policy—that is at the heart of everything that we are trying to do in this policy area. It is why we have created the brownfield fund, which is available to those councils that really want to seize this opportunity to unlock those parcels of land. It is also driving our interest in some of the planning freedoms, such as the ability for a small builder or an entrepreneur to use the new permitted development rights that I have announced this week to purchase a disused office building with the knowledge and certainty that he or she can knock that down and turn it into good-quality housing as quickly as possible. We do not want to see the needless ruination of the countryside—we all want to see it preserved for future generations—but we have to balance that with ensuring that homes are available for the next generation in those parts of the country where people really want to live.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I heard what the Secretary of State said about the importance of completing local plans. Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is working together with our friends and neighbours in Stoke-on-Trent on a joint local plan. Will the Secretary of State assure me and them that as we get Britain building homes, the Government will also invest in infrastructure such as the schools, roads, public transport and GP services that are needed to support new developments?
Robert Jenrick
I am pleased to hear that Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent are working closely together—I am not surprised now that both are represented exclusively by Conservative MPs for the first time. We absolutely want to ensure more investment in infrastructure. As we set out in our manifesto, the infrastructure should flow first. We need well-planned, modern communities, which is why we have invested through the housing infrastructure fund. We will be succeeding that with a new, larger and longer-term single housing infrastructure fund, which will ensure that at least £10 billion is available for local areas to plan for the future and ensure that the roads, GP surgeries, utilities and hospitals are there to meet people’s demands.
Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)
What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that local authorities such as Blackpool include adequate provisions for the environment in their local plans?
Robert Jenrick
That is already a requirement and we are going to do work to see whether further action can be taken. The future homes standard, the final details of which we will announce shortly, will mean that from 2025 no new home is built in this country unless it has very high levels of energy efficiency and sustainability—at least a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions. If a council is in the process of making a plan, or will be soon, it will need to plan for all homes to be meeting that standard, or higher, in the years ahead.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Town centres such as Warrington’s can thrive again if we focus on regeneration before we use the green belt. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to make sure that that is a reality?
Robert Jenrick
With our £3.6 billion towns fund, the Government are setting out to do exactly that: to help local communities to come together and to work with the business community to harness private sector investment, unlock pieces of land and get more homes built in town centres. There are great examples throughout the country of councils planning significant numbers of new homes in the town centre. For example, the other day I was in Loughborough, a relatively small town that now has a plan for 1,000 extra homes to be built, some above shops and some on brownfield sites. That is exactly what needs to happen in every town centre in the country to get footfall and create new, vibrant life in town centres.
Rough Sleeping
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the latest rough sleeping annual statistics for 2019, published today, and the Government’s new approach.
I think we can all agree that it is a moral shame that we see so many people sleeping rough on our streets. We are determined to end the blight of rough sleeping and have placed this great social ill at the heart of the moral mission of the Government. Today’s figures are encouraging. They show that for a second year in a row the number of people sleeping rough has fallen. Across England, the numbers have fallen by 9%, building on last year’s reduction which was the first fall in eight years. Areas funded by the Government’s rough sleeping initiative saw a 12% decrease. Manchester is down 26%; Camden down 54%; Birmingham down 43%; and Enfield down 69%. Cornwall is down 55%; Hastings down 56%; the City of London is down 39%; Swale down 69%; Bedford down 41%; and Tameside is down by 86%. London saw a decrease of 11%. That is the first decrease in the number of rough sleepers in London for six years and the largest decrease since 2010. That, as colleagues who represent London constituencies will know, comes despite the very considerable and specific challenges faced in the capital, including, as the figures show, the fact that 42% of those sleeping rough in the city, and quite possibly more than that, are non-UK nationals.
Those figures confirm what I have seen since I became Housing Secretary in the summer: dedicated and targeted support, backed by significant levels of Government support, is getting vulnerable people off the streets and into safe accommodation where they can begin to turn their lives around. The Government’s strategy is working. I would like to pay tribute to the hard work of charities, service providers, local authorities and many, many volunteers backed by Government funding across the country, who are working tirelessly to give rough sleepers the support they need to help them off the streets, and to begin the long and complex process of turning their lives around. That does not mean our work ends here. We are perhaps coming up out of the valley, but we are very far from the mountain top.
This Conservative Government have made it an overriding priority to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. There is a great deal more to do and we must be honest with ourselves about the scale of the challenge and tackle it head-on with renewed vigour. That is why I am pleased that the Prime Minister and I are today announcing that Dame Louise Casey will lead a review of rough sleeping. This work will consider the links between 24-hour street activity and rough sleeping, particularly physical and mental health issues, and provide advice to me and to the Prime Minister on how we can best use the levers of central and local government to support this group and continue to reduce rough sleeping across the country. I know that Dame Louise’s vast experience, rigour and candour, and the fact that she has worked across party for many years, mean that she is the right person to look at what is needed and help to get the job done. I want to support Dame Louise to move at a pace commensurate with the seriousness and urgency of the action we must take now.
Meanwhile, we will continue to build on our successful rough sleeping strategy, guided by the best evidence, intervening rapidly where people are sleeping on the streets, and supporting people’s recovery to ensure that they never have to sleep rough again. Putting this ambition into practice, the Government have today announced £236 million of new money for move-on accommodation, safely supporting up to an additional 6,000 rough sleepers, and those at immediate risk of rough sleeping, off the streets into the safe and secure accommodation they deserve, with support wrapped around them. This is on top of the £437 million that the Government have provided to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping in the next financial year, including more than £112 million to fund services through the rough sleeping initiative. This funding will be used by councils to provide up to 6,000 beds and 2,500 support staff over the next year, so the number of beds will be increasing very rapidly.
We recognise that there are particular challenges in responding to the increase in European economic area national rough sleepers, and hon. Members may recall that as part of the cold weather fund, the Government took the unprecedented decision to extend limited powers to the most affected local authorities to support certain EEA nationals sleeping rough for a limited period. That approach has been successful, with over 400 EEA nationals accommodated in November and December last year, and many of them supported into work or to return home. The Government have today taken the decision to continue some of those services until 31 December 2020, when the transition period ends and the new immigration system will be in place. I will work closely with the Home Secretary on how we address those challenges at the end of the transition period.
While prevention, outreach and emergency support are of course vital, we need secure, sustainable accommodation to end rough sleeping for good, and increasing the provision of affordable housing is fundamental to making that happen. This Government have delivered nearly half a million new, affordable homes. We have also abolished the council borrowing cap, so that local authorities are able to build up to 10,000 more social homes a year, and many are doing that.
We cannot and will not let that momentum slip. That is why we have already committed to 250,000 new affordable homes by March 2022 through the affordable homes programme, backed by £9 billion. We are increasing the supply of social housing and we will ensure that rough sleepers, and those at risk of rough sleeping, are provided with homes that are available long term and are appropriate to their needs. We simply must build more homes as a country and I will be doing all I can to ensure that that happens.
However, boosting housing supply is just one of many long-term measures that we must take to properly and permanently address homelessness and rough sleeping. We have to redouble our efforts to tackle the underlying problems that have led many people to fall into a life on the streets. Last year, four in 10 of the rough sleeping population in London were suffering from a severe drug dependency and the same proportion were suffering from alcohol dependency. Half of all rough sleepers were assessed as having a mental health support need, and, shockingly, data from 2017 indicates that eight in 10 rough sleepers who have died in London suffered from severe mental health conditions. We cannot allow this injustice to continue. We are stepping up our work to provide specialist help and support for those suffering from mental ill health, and that is backed by £30 million of additional funding from NHS England.
On top of that, we are working to implement test models of community-based provision across six projects that are designed to enable access to health and support services for people who are sleeping rough with both mental ill health and substance dependency needs. Rough sleeping is as much a health challenge as a housing one and our work will reflect that. We also need a concerted effort to bring the different support services together—from outreach to housing, health, policing and immigration—so that we can effectively tackle the multiple issues that lead to individuals finding themselves homeless.
We are acutely aware of the scale of the challenge before us. Ending rough sleeping within this Parliament is one of the most ambitious targets set by any Government since the publication of the Beveridge report and the creation of the welfare state. We accept this challenge as a moral mission and obligation that we cannot pass up. Many of the underlying causes of rough sleeping that I have spoken about are deep-rooted, built up over successive generations and successive Governments. I hope that Members across the House will support us in this collective endeavour and help us, as a country, to achieve this simple but profoundly important objective: to bring rough sleeping to an end once and for all.
Sarah Jones
That is particularly insulting to the hundreds of our armed forces veterans who are sleeping rough, who this Government have abandoned despite their years of service to our country.
As the first snow of the new decade falls on our streets outside, we must face up to the human cost of this Conservative Government: two people a day are dying on our streets; 127,000 children are homeless in temporary accommodation; and the rough sleeping figures are five times higher than the official statistics. Homelessness was tackled by the last Labour Government when we inherited a similar scale of crisis. We reduced rough sleeping by three quarters. The Secretary of State’s announcements today will not go far enough to deliver on his targets. To quote Louise Casey:
“We have gone from a beacon of success to an international example of failure”,
and we
“must not allow this issue to be ignored, we must feel its impact and act as the country we are proud to be.”
Robert Jenrick
I accept the hon. Lady’s comments and say with all sincerity and humility that we must do more as a country to tackle rough sleeping. That is exactly what this new Conservative Administration intend to do. The Prime Minister and I have put this at the heart of our agenda, and we intend to deliver on the promises we have made today.
The hon. Lady asks me about the statistics, but I think she is misinformed. The statistics published today are not the Government’s statistics. They are statistics produced by a rigorous count conducted by local authorities, with independent verification; they are then compiled independently by Homeless Link, which is the umbrella organisation for some of the most respected homelessness charities in this country, including Shelter, Crisis and St Mungo’s. The methodology, which has been used for 10 years, is broadly the same as that used in most developed countries, including Canada and Japan; it is highly respected and it is vastly superior to the methodology used under the last Labour Government, when the current shadow Secretary of State for Housing, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), was this country’s Housing Minister. That methodology was deeply flawed. It asked local authorities to count only if, in their opinion, there were more than 10 rough sleepers in their area. As a result, there was no count in vast parts of the country. The statistics published today are robust and a huge improvement on those that came before them.
The hon. Lady asks about the rough sleeping initiative and the funding we have put in. In fact, the increases are significant. RSI funding has gone up by 30% this year. We are spending £400 million in the next financial year, and the announcement made today is of an additional £236 million—and yes, it is new money.
The hon. Lady spoke about housing more generally. I have to say that last year we built more homes in this country than we have in any year of the last 30. On average, we are building more affordable homes every year than the last Labour Government built, and more council houses were built last year than in the 13 years of Labour Government. Where does Labour have control? In Wales. How many council houses were built in Wales last year? Fifty-seven. How many were built the year before? Eighty. How many in each of the three years before that? Zero, zero and zero. What is the No. 1 challenge facing the Government in achieving our housing targets? The failing Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
The hon. Lady asks about our commitment to a fairer deal between tenants and landlords. In the Queen’s Speech, we said we would introduce a renter’s rights Bill, which will be a significant piece of legislation. We are in the process of drafting that Bill, which will absolutely bring an end to section 21.
Finally, the hon. Lady made some disparaging remarks about my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway). I point out politely that in the past few years, he has spent over five months sleeping rough on the streets of London, Birmingham and New York city. I may be mistaken, but I do not think the hon. Lady has done that. I do not think any other Member of this House has spent so much time with members of our homeless population. I know for a fact that he has members of staff in his office in this House whom he has mentored off the streets and into a better life. Sometimes, he asks unacceptable questions, as George Orwell would put it, but we have to ask unacceptable questions sometimes if we as politicians genuinely want to tackle the big questions of our age. To tackle rough sleeping, we have to tackle addiction.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend on his commitment and the additional investment by the Government, which is starting to bear fruit, although there is still much to say. I welcome in particular his recognition that solving homelessness is not just about sustainable income; it is about dealing with the underlying problems of those who find themselves on the street. To that end, may I invite my hon. Friend to come to Worthing to see a really innovative scheme—a partnership between Turning Tides, a homeless charity, Worthing Borough Council and a developer, Roffey Homes? It has made available a nurses’ home, which will be developed after five years. There, rough sleepers are given not just accommodation, but support from mental health services and the benefits office, and help with sustainable living. Because of that, the number of overnight rough sleepers, which had been in the 30s, was down to seven at the last count. That is the sort of innovation and partnership we want. I hope my right hon. Friend will come to see the project and make sure the example is spread throughout the country.
Robert Jenrick
I would be delighted to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency. At the heart of our new strategy is bringing together a co-ordinated approach in central Government. Dame Louise Casey and I will work to ensure that all of us—the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office—work together as a team to deliver our commitment. We already see that work in local communities by some brilliant charities. For example, St Mungo’s takes mobile hubs to rough sleeping hotspots to bring all the services together. That is the surest way to tackle the challenge.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I am grateful to the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I agree that it is a moral scandal that we have rough sleeping in this day and age, and I wish him every success with his strategy to tackle rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.
I have a few points to make. First, in the four years to 2019, the Scottish Government delivered five times more social rented properties per head of population than the Westminster Government. Progress out of poverty is thereby made more likely. Poverty rates are lower in Scotland owing to the existence of affordable housing. Earlier this month, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported that
“for someone with the same life circumstances such as qualifications, wage and family type, progress out of poverty is more likely if they live in Scotland or Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK.”
The JRF also attributes lower poverty rates in Scotland than in England and Wales to
“lower rents in the social housing sector as well as Scotland having a higher proportion of social rented properties”.
I have a couple of questions. Will the Government’s review of their homelessness strategy look at what is being done in other countries, including Scotland? Will they follow the Scottish Government’s lead in building genuinely affordable housing?
Robert Jenrick
I am grateful the hon. Gentleman for those comments. We will certainly and happily look at the experience in Scotland and other parts of the Union, as we do at international examples. One of the purposes of bringing in someone as respected as Dame Louise Casey, who not only has a great deal of experience within the UK but is an internationally respected figure, is to learn from other parts of the world. I believe we are already doing that. Our Housing First pilot is learning from what happens in Finland and the United States and we have seen tremendous progress—success rates up to 90% in some areas. First is the simple aim of getting people into accommodation; then there is provision of sophisticated, long-term, wrap-around support. We are keen to learn from best practice all over the world.
Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)
Will the independent review by Dame Louise Casey engage with the many excellent charities across the country, such as St Mungo’s and Crisis, as well as Guildford Action, which is a local centre of excellence in my constituency helping those who are homeless and sleeping rough?
Robert Jenrick
It certainly will. As I said, there are many fantastic organisations across the country. It has been my pleasure to visit many of them in my brief tenure as Housing Secretary. I went with the Prime Minister this morning to visit the Connection by St Martin in the Fields, where I met staff and clients involved with the work there. I pay tribute to them and to other organisations across the country. We want to learn from them and ensure that we build on their work.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I welcome the ambition the Secretary of State has set out. As he knows, a service at St Paul’s cathedral two weeks ago, in which my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State took part, celebrated the work of the church-based homelessness night shelters in London. There is now at least one in every London borough, each involving seven or sometimes 14 places of worship. They spare thousands from sleeping rough in London during the winter. Will the right hon. Gentleman join me in commending the work of those many volunteers, but also agree with the preacher at that service, the Bishop of Edmonton, who said that volunteers should not really have to take this work on?
Robert Jenrick
I was sorry not to be able to join the right hon. Gentleman at that service. I intended to be there, but a commitment arose in the House. I absolutely pay tribute to volunteers across the country and the very important work done by churches and other faith organisations, which I think we all know about from our constituencies, but which is particularly prevalent in London. Of course there is a role for the state. I hope he can see from my commitment and that of the Prime Minister today that we intend to put in the resources, but this is also a moral issue for all of us as a country. I think we should see great organisations and volunteers, praise them, and encourage them to continue their good work.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the work that he is doing to end rough sleeping for good, but rough sleeping is clearly the tip of the iceberg—the visible sign of homelessness. It is estimated that more than 300,000 people in the country are homeless on any one day, and to achieve my right hon. Friend’s aim, we will need to build not 10,000 but 90,000 new social homes a year. What measures will he take to ensure that we build the homes that are needed, especially in London—I know that he has condemned the current Mayor of London—so that people are not forced to sleep rough? The human and financial cost of putting those people back on their feet is huge.
Robert Jenrick
Let me again praise the good work that my hon. Friend has done, not least in presenting the Bill that became the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which has played such a crucial role in driving some of the results that we are seeing today. He is absolutely right: we must not simply deal with the symptoms, but also tackle the cause. That may include some of the health issues that we have already discussed today, but the fundamental issue for me as Housing Secretary is that we must build more homes of all types in all parts of the country. Last year we built more homes than had been built in any of the last 30 years, but we have now set ourselves the objective of building a million new homes during the current Parliament, and we would like to see house building rise to 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the decade.
These are difficult and challenging targets which will require further Government investment in infrastructure and affordable housing, and we intend to make that investment. They will also require a great many councils to make difficult decisions. If councils really care about the acute housing need in their communities, they will have to use imagination and determination to ensure that the necessary homes are built, and we will be pushing them to do so.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
Does the Secretary of State agree that it is a moral scandal that hundreds of homeless people are still dying every year on our streets, without the palliative care that they ought to receive during their last weeks and months? Will he look at the Homelessness (End of Life Care) Bill, which I introduced in the last Parliament? Will he also agree to meet me and the charities that helped me to write the Bill, including Pathway, St Mungo’s, Hospice UK and Shelter, and enable them to use some of the funds that he has announced today—in conjunction with the NHS—to end the scandal of terminally ill homeless people dying without proper care?
Robert Jenrick
The right hon. Gentleman has made a number of important points. It was for those humanitarian reasons, among others, that we chose to use the derogation enabling public money to be spent on compassionate services for non-UK nationals on our streets. We did not feel it was right that those individuals were suffering in silence and we were unable to support them. As I said in my statement, there are serious underlying issues. According to the latest figures that we have, from 2017, about 90% of the people who have died on our streets were suffering from serious mental health conditions, and we need to address those. I shall be happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman.
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
I welcome the additional funds, but will they be made available to the councils around the country that are working hard to end rough sleeping, including Wolverhampton? May I also invite my right hon. Friend to visit a charity that he knows well, the Good Shepherd Ministry in Wolverhampton, to see the new facilities that have just opened?
Robert Jenrick
I should be delighted to visit Wolverhampton. As I have said before, I volunteered at that charity as a teenager, and it is a fantastic organisation. We will be working to see how we can roll out the funds to provide those 6,000 move-on units across the country, which we will do in various ways: through new properties, through use of the private rented sector, and by refurbishing existing accommodation.
There are numerous good examples in the west midlands. Housing First is being piloted there, and just before Christmas I visited Walsall, not so far from my hon. Friend’s constituency, to see a lady who had moved into good-quality accommodation for the first time in many years after sleeping rough in Walsall. That is exactly the kind of intervention that we want to see throughout the country.
Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)
The south-east has the highest rates of homelessness outside London. The Secretary of State has mentioned the provision of beds and the moving-on service, but does he recognise that this issue does not simply relate to those who are sleeping in doorways, although that is bad enough? Every day my team helps families whose members—sometimes pregnant—are often sleeping three or four to one bedroom. When will affordable, suitable accommodation come to Canterbury for them, so that my team no longer has to bid daily for the two or three properties that are currently available?
Robert Jenrick
We are investing more than ever before in affordable housing. Our affordable homes programme is a £9 billion commitment to provide 250,000 affordable homes. We have also made a manifesto commitment that when the programme ends we will replace it with another, which I hope will be bigger and more ambitious and help to make genuinely affordable homes available in more parts of the country, including Canterbury.
Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s positive statement. Will he join me in paying tribute to the only Conservative-led council in Greater Manchester, which is working to bring an end to rough sleeping in Bolton?
Robert Jenrick
I certainly will. I do not have the figures for Bolton at my fingertips, but Greater Manchester achieved a significant reduction in rough sleeping as a result of good work by councils and funding from the rough sleeping initiative, and we want that to continue. I believe I am going to visit Bolton shortly. I know that my hon. Friend and some of his councillors have been very involved in that initiative, and have been raising money for local charities by sleeping rough.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
An estimated two thirds of released prisoners who are homeless go on to reoffend. What steps is the Minister taking with the Ministry of Justice to tackle the problem of people who are released from prison without secure accommodation? Crisis has raised the issue of the criminalisation of homeless people who are rough sleepers. Does the Minister support the repeal of the Vagrancy Act 1824?
Robert Jenrick
We are reviewing the Vagrancy Act, taking into account the differing opinions on the way forward, and will deliver advice on that shortly. We are absolutely focused on the challenge of ensuring that ex-offenders can have safe and secure accommodation and begin to rebuild their life. We are investing in pilots that are being organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), the homelessness Minister, and we are working closely with the Lord Chancellor, as we did with his predecessors.
Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of additional funds and an urgent review. May I also pay tribute to our wonderful local charities and Stoke-on-Trent City Council, which have been doing such tireless work in this regard?
A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of seeing a production by a charity called Voices of Stoke, which presented the back stories of people who were sleeping rough and examined their complex needs. It was enormously powerful. I think that we all welcome a knowledge of the complexity of why people end up on the streets. Does my right hon. Friend agree that no solution that might help to end rough sleeping once and for all should be taken off the table?
Robert Jenrick
I certainly do. I hope that my hon. Friend, and other Members in all parts of the House, will recognise not only our determination to tackle the issue but the fact that we are taking a nuanced view of a complex and sophisticated challenge and bringing together all Departments, from health to housing, to address it.
I pay particular tribute to the volunteers, the organisations and the Conservative-led council in Stoke. The city has seen a reduction of more than 50% in the number of rough sleepers over the last year, which is a tremendous achievement, and I hope that my hon. Friend will pass on my thanks to all who have been involved in those efforts.
Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Rough sleeping has quadrupled in Hull over the last decade, which I think we can all agree is shameful, but does the Secretary of State agree with the statement by St Mungo’s that £1 billion less is being spent on supporting single homeless people than was being spent a decade ago?
Robert Jenrick
We have been taking action through the Homelessness Reduction Act, and there will be important work for us to do as we approach the comprehensive spending review to ensure that councils have the funds that will enable them to continue their own work. We have also ensured that the local housing allowance will no longer be frozen, but will rise in the next financial year in line with the consumer prices index. As I have said repeatedly, the central task for me as Housing Secretary is to build more homes of all types in all parts of the country, and I certainly hope we can work with the council in Hull to deliver that.
Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)
I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and thank him in particular for the £576,000 that has been awarded following a joint bid from Aylesbury Vale and Wycombe District Councils, which cover my constituency along with Chiltern and South Bucks. Does he agree that we need to encourage more councils to work together to tackle homelessness, not least so that they can build the strongest possible partnerships with charities and specialist service providers, which do not necessarily organise according to council boundaries?
Robert Jenrick
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. There are some fantastic councils across the country, and today’s figures would not have been achieved without them. I pay tribute to them, and encourage them to continue to learn from each other and work with voluntary groups, with charities and, of course, with the Government. If there is anything further that we can do to assist my hon. Friend and his colleagues in Buckinghamshire, we will certainly do it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
We have delivered over 1.5 million new homes since 2010 and last year saw the highest level of delivery in over 30 years, but I am determined that we go further by reforming the planning system and investing in infrastructure and new affordable homes to deliver 1 million homes over this Parliament.
Laura Trott
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Can he reassure the House that this very welcome house building will not come at the expense of green belt, especially in Sevenoaks?
Robert Jenrick
We recognise how highly many people value their local green belt, including no doubt my hon. Friend’s constituents in Sevenoaks, but meeting these legitimate aspirations must not mean that the acute housing needs of communities go unmet or the dream of the next generation to get a place of their own goes unfulfilled. Local communities wishing to preserve the green belt sustainably must therefore meet local housing needs in other ways: through gentle density, through reimagining town centres and through aggressively redeveloping brownfield land. I intend to encourage each of those.
James Grundy
Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns regarding Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester spatial framework, which seems to threaten a number of green belt sites in my constituency of Leigh, while simultaneously not making these sites available for delivery since the landowners have made it clear they are not available for development?
Robert Jenrick
Due to my quasi-judicial role in the planning system, I cannot comment on the merits of the plan itself. I can say, however, that a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend, have made me aware of their concerns; even, I think, the shadow Secretary of State is campaigning against the plan. These matters will be looked at by a planning inspector should the plan reach submission.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Flats have a crucial role to play in meeting housing demand, especially for first-time buyers. In London, the price gap between a flat and a house is more than £160,000, but the entire market for high-rise flats has ground to a halt, because the Secretary of State has repeatedly failed to publish flammable cladding tests and mortgage lenders have taken fright. Up to 600,000 people are now in unsellable properties, and The Sunday Times put the number much higher at 3 million private flats now exposed. So after promising the results repeatedly since last summer will the Secretary of State tell us when he will publish the test results and how he will fix this problem that sits squarely at his door?
Robert Jenrick
Like the hon. Lady, I am committed to tackling this issue. We want to bring about the largest change in building safety standards that this country has known in a generation, and we are doing that in many different ways. We have done it through banning ACM, the most dangerous cladding on buildings. We have done it through launching a new building safety regulator; there was no building safety regulator in this country, and successive Governments had failed to do that. I will be publishing the results of the Building Research Establishment’s studies. The reason for the delay is that we want to ensure that the right studies are done and as much work is done as possible. We will be guided by the experts and by expert evidence. I will not publish results until experts tell us that they are ready to do so, and I expect that will be in a few weeks’ time.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that it is not just about the number of homes, but is also about the quality of those homes. Indeed, he has established the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, which recently produced its report, “Living with beauty.” One of its key recommendations was for substantial reforms to the permitted development right regime, so that in future all homes would have to have minimum space standards, would have to conform to the design guidelines laid down by the local authority and also pay a betterment levy, as laid down by the authority. Is the Secretary of State going to accept those recommendations?
Robert Jenrick
I was absolutely delighted by the findings of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission. It is an important piece of work and, as I said at the launch of the report, we intend to accept the majority of the findings. I will be responding to that in due course. We must put the question of permitted development rights in context; PDRs have brought forward tens of thousands of homes that would not otherwise exist in this country, and that freedom is an important one that we intend to build on in the planning system. There have been a very small number of abuses where we have seen, frankly, unacceptable standards, including homes being built without any windows. I want to take action against those, because I want everybody to live in good-quality, safe accommodation.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
The Government are acting to deliver on our ambitious manifesto commitment to be the first G20 country to eliminate rough sleeping. We recently committed an extra £112 million to the rough sleeping initiative. The funding is a 30% increase on the previous year. It will provide up to 6,000 beds and 2,500 staff across the country.
Bob Blackman
I commend my right hon. Friend for the action he is taking, but clearly the best way to reduce rough sleeping is to prevent it happening in the first place. The review of my Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 is due at the end of this financial year and local authorities need to know how much funding they will have in successive years to deliver that Act. When he reviews the Act, will he ensure that local authorities, in combating homelessness, abide not only by the letter but the spirit of the law?
Robert Jenrick
I would like to take this opportunity to thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his invaluable work on the Homelessness Reduction Act. Since the Act was implemented, over 130,000 households have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved. We will be reviewing the implementation of the Act, including resourcing and how it is working in practice. Local authorities will now receive an additional £63 million in the next financial year through the homelessness reduction grant to carry out these duties. In the comprehensive spending review, which will set the multi-year spending review for local government, we will certainly take it very seriously.
Caroline Ansell
In Eastbourne, we will make very good use of our share of the £1.5 million from the Government to address this issue locally. Our winter night shelter, which is orchestrated by local churches and powered by volunteers and the generous support of local businesses such as Iron Maidens, will close its doors in a matter of days. Will my right hon. Friend meet me and other partners to look at what it would mean to seek to establish a shelter all year round?
Robert Jenrick
May I take this opportunity, like my hon. Friend, to pay tribute to all those involved in rough sleeping initiatives across the country? I visited many over the course of my six or seven months in this job and I have never failed to be incredibly impressed by their commitment and passion. I am sure that that is the case with the one in her constituency and I will, of course, happily meet her. The rough sleeping initiative, which the Government have pioneered, is working. Last year we saw the first fall in homelessness for many years, albeit a modest fall of 2%. I want to take that forward and I believe passionately that this is one of the great social ills that we can and will tackle as a Government.
Nickie Aiken
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the excellent work undertaken by organisations such as The Passage in my constituency is vital if we are to meet our manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament?
Robert Jenrick
I thank my hon. Friend who, in her former role as leader of Westminster Council, played a critical role in taking forward these issues. I join her in praising the staff of The Passage, which is a phenomenal organisation. I have seen some of its work in practice. There are many great organisations in her constituency. I visited King George’s Hostel in Victoria just two weeks ago and was incredibly impressed by its staff. The approach I will be taking as Secretary of State will be to bring together for the first time health with housing, because homelessness is not just a housing crisis but a crisis of addiction and mental health. By bringing them together in a co-ordinated fashion for the first time, I genuinely believe we will be able to tackle this issue.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Nearly three years ago, a terrible explosion in New Ferry in my constituency left many buildings derelict. Local residents tell me that we now have people sleeping rough in derelict buildings, which is why I wrote to the Secretary of State on 28 January asking if he would meet me to discuss the situation in New Ferry and the fact that the Government need to help us. Please, will he meet me?
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Robert Jenrick
I would be very happy to hear more about the specific cases that the hon. Lady raises. We have a strategy; we are investing more than ever before—we spent 30% more than we did in the previous financial year—and the initiatives that we are funding are working. I am pleased to say that we are seeing the first falls in rough sleeping for many years, but we are not complacent. We believe that this is an important challenge and it is one that the Prime Minister and I are committed to. We hope that when the statistics for the November count are published on Thursday, we will see a further fall and a further move in the right direction on this issue.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
In Chesterfield, we have one-bedroom flats available, yet we also have people sleeping rough on the streets. The reason is that the benefits they receive do not cover the rent that they would have to pay for a one-bedroom council flat, so they are unable to take them up. I agree entirely with what the Secretary of State says about the value of hostels, but we could do away with the need for a lot of those if we had a welfare policy that supported people to live in the houses that already exist.
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Gentleman is right that this is a multifaceted issue. We have ended the freeze on the local housing allowance, so that will rise in the next financial year with the consumer prices index. That will help to make it more affordable for individuals on the lowest incomes to get into homes in the private rented sector, but we will bring together all parts of Government with renewed vigour—whether that is the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office or the Department of Health and Social Care—to ensure that we tackle this issue as never before.
Lia Nici (Great Grimsby) (Con)
Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
This Government are committed to increasing the supply of affordable housing with our £9 billion affordable homes programme from 2016 to 2022, and we have committed in our manifesto to bringing forward a successor, which we hope will be bigger and better. We have delivered almost 52,000 new affordable homes in the south-west since 2010.
Scott Mann
My constituents are particularly excited about this Department’s agenda, and they are pleased about the Government’s commitment to delivering more local affordable housing. How will my right hon. Friend ensure not only that we are building homes for the future but that they are of a high quality and high standard?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As well as enabling people to get on to the housing ladder, it is important to ensure that the new homes we build are of good quality. It is unacceptable that new houses have in many cases been built to a shoddy standard and that some house builders have displayed poor service when house buyers find that they have problems with their new home. That is why I am today announcing a statutory independent new homes ombudsman to protect homebuyers from these rogue developers. Poor-quality builders will now have to pay compensation for shoddy workmanship, and house builders must join the new ombudsman scheme, so all house buyers will see swift action to resolve the issues that they encounter and builders must put quality first if they wish to continue to be part of the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.
Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)
Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
We recently published a consultation on First Homes, our exciting new scheme to give a 30% discount to local first-time buyers, which will help tens of thousands of people across the country to buy their first home. This will add to the 600,000 households already supported by Government home-ownership schemes since 2010.
Anthony Browne
I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. Being able to get on the property ladder is a particularly big issue in my constituency—South Cambridgeshire—because property prices are so high, so I very much welcome the First Homes initiative. Can the Secretary of State tell me whether the First Homes initiative will boost the supply of new homes, or will it primarily change the tenure of existing affordable housing schemes?
Robert Jenrick
We hope it will do both. It will increase the supply of new homes by building popular support for new developments, but I completely accept that the housing challenges we face as a country are primarily supply-side. There is only so much that can be done through new demand-side reforms such as First Homes, which is exactly why, as a new Government, we will be taking forward important supply-side reforms such as those in my forthcoming White Paper on the planning system to unlock more land for development and create a simpler, faster and cheaper planning system.
Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
I am delighted to welcome my right hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) and my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government team. Alongside the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), who has responsibility for local government, we will be working together to get more people on the housing ladder, end rough sleeping, build safer, greener and more beautiful homes, and level up all parts of the country. I wish to place on record my thanks to my right hon. Friends the Members for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) and for Tatton (Esther McVey) for their service to the Department and to the Government.
During the recess, many of our communities were affected by Storms Dennis and Ciara, and I pay tribute to the men and women of the emergency services, local councils and the many volunteers on the ground for their tireless work to help people affected. My Department is supporting communities to get back on their feet, activating the emergency Bellwin funding, and providing a financial package of support, including council tax and business rate relief for the worst-affected areas.
Andy Carter
Does my right hon. Friend agree that private sector building owners need to act more quickly to remediate dangerous aluminium composite material cladding on their buildings?
Robert Jenrick
I agree entirely with my hon. Friend on that. Work by building owners in the private sector to ensure the safety of residents living in tower blocks has been unacceptably slow, and I have been consistently clear with them that there is no excuse for their lack of progress. Today I am publishing a list of building owners who do not yet have a clear plan in place to remediate all their buildings. I will not hesitate in future to name others if they fail to demonstrate progress. Today I am asking the relevant local authorities to commence enforcement action against the entities I have named, and I will be supporting those local authorities to do this at pace.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
It is good to see the Secretary of State still in his place after the Cabinet reshuffle. He is serious about the job, and he certainly has a serious job to do, given that hundreds of thousands of people are living with the mental and financial burden of having unsafe cladding on their home, nearly three years after the terrible Grenfell Tower fire. Never mind his exhortations, he promised that all social sector blocks with Grenfell-style cladding would have that removed and replaced by the end of last year. Why has that vital promise been broken?
Robert Jenrick
We have taken decisive action to address the challenge of ACM cladding; we banned combustible cladding on buildings, and we have also brought forward the £600 million scheme, for both the social sector and the private sector. I am frustrated that some, particularly in the private sector but also in the social sector, have taken so long to do this. That is why I am taking the action I am today, as promised, to name and shame the private sector entities that have failed to take the actions that all of us in this House would expect them to take, particularly given that public money is being put at their disposal now in order to remove this dangerous cladding. I will take all the steps necessary to do this and I will do so as quickly as possible.
John Healey
We have heard this before, and frustration and exhortation simply are not sufficient. Social sector blocks are just the tip of the iceberg, and the Secretary of State still has not got a grip on those. Four months ago, he promised action against private block owners who are not removing unsafe Grenfell-style ACM cladding, but his own departmental figures show that 43 block owners—one in four—do not even have a plan in place. He has to do more to act, and that is before we even get into dealing with 1,000 extra non-ACM unsafe blocks. Enough is enough: will he now accept and back the Labour plan for legislation to make those private block owners do and pay for the remedial action, and put a stop to the scandal whereby vulnerable flat owners are having to pay simply to make their homes safe?
Robert Jenrick
The right hon. Gentleman is behind the curve on this one; he is behind the action we are taking as a Government. We have already said that we are going to bring forward the fire safety Bill, which was in the Queen’s Speech and which will give fire and rescue services the powers that he wishes—I hope that means he will be supporting that Bill when it comes forward in the coming months. We have said that we will follow that quickly with the building safety Bill, which will be the biggest change to fire safety and building standards in this country in my lifetime.
Robert Jenrick
We will be doing that, as we have already said, before the summer recess.
Robert Jenrick
In draft, because this is an important and complex piece of legislation. As regards those buildings that still have ACM cladding, all bar a very small number of owners now have a clear plan to remediate that cladding. About a third have taken it off, about a third are in the process of doing so, and the remainder have a clear plan, except for the small number of egregious building owners I have named today.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
On infrastructure and community projects all across Scotland there are EU flags that proudly show where European funding has benefited those organisations. Now that Scotland has been dragged out of the EU against our will, we will no longer benefit from that funding. When will the details of the shared prosperity fund come forward? There was meant to be a consultation on it in 2018 but that did not materialise, so will the Secretary of State update the House on when the shared prosperity fund will come forward, to give clarity and certainty to communities?
Robert Jenrick
We will bring forward our proposals on the UK shared prosperity fund in due course. There is a significant sum in the European territorial co-operation fund—around £600 million—which I believe is what the hon. Gentleman speaks of. It is important that we get it right, so we will fully consult partners throughout the United Kingdom to ensure that we have a UK-wide fund that is committed to levelling up all parts of the country.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Robert Jenrick
I have great sympathy with the issue that my hon. Friend raises, and it will be addressed in our forthcoming White Paper on the planning system.
Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)
Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)
After our third one-in-100-years flood in seven and a half years in Calder Valley, the support package announced last week for the 1,187 properties that were flooded was a welcome relief. However, it appears that the match funding element of the package for those who fund-raise for residents badly affected by floods is not included. Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether the match funding is included, as it was last time, and whether it will be available to South Yorkshire before Christmas?
Robert Jenrick
May I praise my hon. Friend for the hard work that he has done on behalf of his communities, who have faced severe flooding over the past two weeks? We have worked together and brought forward a significant financial package that is comparable to that provided in 2015. I do not believe that anyone has yet approached the Government to ask for match funding for a charity foundation, for example, as happened in 2015, but I would be happy to consider that if it was suggested.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
Later this afternoon we will discuss the local government finance report, but there will be no true long-term sustainability for any local authority until adult social care has been resolved in this generation. We have heard lots about the Government’s desire to create a consensus on the issue. Where are the proposals so that we can start to discuss them?
Local Government Finance (England)
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
I beg to move,
That the Local Government Finance Report (England) for 2020–21 (HC 68), which was laid before this House on 6 February, be approved.
It is my pleasure to follow the successful passage of the police settlement and to speak after a number of brilliant maiden speeches, to which I had the pleasure to listen. I gently say that although today is the 100th anniversary of Nancy Astor’s first speech as the first female MP, the first five female councillors were elected more than 10 years before that, in 1907, after the passing of the Act allowing female ratepayers to stand for local councils. It is always local government that gets there first.
It is my privilege as Local Government Secretary to work closely with public servants throughout the country who day in, day out deliver the local public services that we all rely on. These are the people who are improving people’s lives, ensuring access to vital services and helping some of the most vulnerable in our society. I saw this again in the past fortnight, with those who responded to the storms, just as they did during November’s floods. I am immensely grateful for their efforts and delighted to be backing them and their communities today.
Mrs Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend congratulate the parish councils for the really important work that they do to look after flood victims? In Coton in the Elms, Willington, Egginton —goodness me, I need to say so many more—Repton and Barrow upon Trent they worked so hard to help their neighbours in the very difficult times during the recent floods.
Robert Jenrick
I am absolutely delighted to agree with my hon. Friend. Serving on a parish council is an important role in local democracy. I give my praise, along with hers, to all those who serve on parish councils—including in my own constituency, where a number of communities were flooded very seriously over the past week—for the work that they have done to support their local communities as they begin to recover from the very serious floods.
It is because those individuals and the communities they represent matter to this country that today we are backing them with the best local government funding settlement for a decade. The settlement delivers a 4.4% real-terms increase in spending power for councils—£2.9 billion extra. It has been widely welcomed by the sector. It injects significant new resources into adult and children’s social care. It places councils on a stronger financial footing from which to build. It achieves all of that while protecting people from excessive council tax rises—the kind of regressive tax increases that we saw hurting working people year after year under the last Labour Government, during whose time in office council tax doubled.
Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I am staggered, to be honest, because I think that council tax is a regressive tax. Each adult in Newham has lost 50% of the grant that was given by the Government, in an area where more than 50% of our children live in poverty, in order to give to the Tory shires. Does the Secretary of State honestly think that is a fair settlement?
Robert Jenrick
If the hon. Lady is concerned about funding for local public services, she will join me and my colleagues in supporting the best local government settlement we have seen for a decade. She says that council tax is regressive, so what happened under the last Labour Government, when council tax doubled? Under this Government council tax has fallen by 6% in real terms, while we have continued to deliver important public services.
I was determined to champion local government in September’s spending review. I want to thank those who responded so constructively to the two consultations we ran at the end of last year. We can be proud of what we have achieved, and particularly of how the settlement delivers for the most vulnerable in society. It secures £1 billion of new Government funding for social care, alongside the extra £410 million that we invested last year. That is a major new injection of funding that will help local authorities to meet the undoubted rising pressures on the care system, which we all see in our communities and in our own lives.
We will also be maintaining all funding going into the improved better care fund, at the same time as the NHS contribution to the better care fund rises by 3.4% above inflation to over £4 billion, in line with the broader NHS settlement. Alongside this, I am allowing local authorities responsible for adult social care to raise council tax by an additional 2% above the core referendum principle. That is a necessary step that is specifically targeted to meet demand and ensure that vulnerable people are supported.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Councils such as Durham County Council are being disadvantaged, because even if they increase their council tax by 2% to cover that element, it will raise far less than could be raised by some councils in the south, which have larger council tax bases. The demands on Durham County Council are far greater than those on councils in Surrey, for example, because we have fewer self-funders, so how can that be fair?
Robert Jenrick
I will turn now to the specifics for the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency. This settlement will see a 7.1% increase in core spending power, and the additional social care grant for next year will be £12.8 million, which is a very significant increase. For the reasons he has just set out, we decided to apply an equalisation to the social care precept, which will ensure that those areas of the country with the lowest tax base will see more funding flow to them, in a redistribution of funding from those areas elsewhere in the country that, as he rightly says, have higher tax bases. We chose to do that at £150 million, which is more than has been done in previous settlements, precisely to answer the point he makes.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
Local authorities in the top quartile of deprivation are seeing increases averaging £12.3 million next year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this demonstrates that the Government have listened to the concerns of those local authorities that have been most hard-pressed in recent years?
Robert Jenrick
That is absolutely right. My hon. Friend’s own local authority will see a 6.6% increase in its core spending power next year, as a result of this settlement.
Several hon. Members rose—
Robert Jenrick
Let me make some progress.
Taken together, these measures mean that the Government are making almost £6 billion available next year across adult and children’s social care. I appreciate that this is only the start. Fixing social care is one of the defining issues of our generation, which is why this Government will be commencing cross-party talks on social care very soon to get this right once and for all. We welcome hon. Members from all parts of this House to participate in those talks and to do so in a spirit of finding a consensus and of moving forward as a country.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I cannot help but feel concerned that, in spite of what the Secretary of State is saying, the reality around both planned cuts and cuts that will result from the so-called fair funding review will actually make my local authority more than £8 million worse off, when it has already had £200 million cut since 2010. What will that mean to the people—both adults and children—who rely on social care?
Robert Jenrick
I do not doubt the hon. Lady’s sincerity in raising the question, but I do warn against unnecessary scaremongering. The reports that we saw in the press on the fair funding review were put out by the Labour party’s local government press office. They were not based on any actual numbers created by my Department. We have not even published the consultation yet, and so I would disregard them. In fact, the Local Government Association itself later went on to say that these figures are not reliable and are not something on which local councils should make spending decisions. We will proceed with the fair funding review, and I will come on to speak more about that in a moment. We think that it is right that we update what is undoubtedly an antiquated formula and that we base the funding of local public services more closely on the needs of local communities.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
I am glad to hear that the Secretary of State is considering fairer funding. Getting fairer funding, as he will know, is very close to our heart in Leicestershire as we are near the bottom end of the table. One of the interesting things about Leicestershire is its sparsity and rurality. When it comes to making a new equation, will he be considering the fact that it may take a social worker, or some other service, up to an hour to move from Hinckley to, say, Twycross? Will that factor be included in future plans?
Robert Jenrick
It will be, yes, and that is absolutely right. It is important that the new formula, when we bring it forward, takes account of sparsity, the cost of delivering public services in rural settings and the fact that there is deprivation to be found in shire counties, as there is in other parts of the country. I say that as a representative of the county of Nottinghamshire, with long-standing pockets of deprivation in former coalfield communities, all of which needs to be taken into consideration as we bring forward a better updated formula.
Another priority on which not just social care but so many other vital services rest is ensuring that councils have the stability that they need to plan ahead, and I believe that this settlement will help them to do that. It maintains all the grants from 2019-20 and increases core funding in line with inflation. Today, I am announcing a £40 million boost for the sector from the business rates levy account—extra funding that I know will be very welcome by the sector. I recognise that this is a one-year settlement, and I will be leading another push at the comprehensive spending review later this year to ensure that local services get the long-term funding that they need. This stability also gives authorities a platform from which to drive efficiencies and learn from the very best practice of councils across the country, and will act as a spur to improvement.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the ways in which the Secretary of State could give multi-year, almost permanent, guarantees about levels of funding is through a much more ambitious programme of devolution. Is it not time for an English devolution Bill, so that all councils have the fiscal powers that they need to meet the needs of their communities?
Robert Jenrick
If the hon. Gentleman will give me a few minutes, I will come on to our ambitious plans for devolution. He will have seen in the Queen’s Speech that later this year we will bring forward a White Paper on English devolution, which we hope will build on the very good work done in recent years, including to establish Mayors across the country.
Today’s settlement is good news on many counts; it provides more money and more stability for councils, but above all, it is good news for local people. We are delivering the best settlement for a decade while keeping people’s council tax bills low. Under the Conservatives, council tax in England is 6% lower in real terms than in 2010. The average council tax bill increase in 2020-21 is projected to be below 4%. That compares to an average increase of 5.8% between 1997 and 2010. It was a Conservative-led Government who ultimately made sure that local people had the final say on their council tax bills, following years of tax rises under Labour.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says that council tax bills are 6% lower than in 2010, but does he accept the figures produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which show that in real terms, local government spending per head of the population has fallen by 20% since 2010?
Robert Jenrick
I am not familiar with those figures, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that through this settlement, we are providing a 4.4% real-terms increase in spending for councils, while keeping council tax as low as we can.
I am putting forward a controlled package of council tax referendum principles based around a core increase of 2%, with a flexibility of up to £5 for shire district councils. This strikes the right balance between giving local authorities flexibility to meet the needs of their local area and empowering local residents to veto excessive increases.
As we have heard in a number of interventions, we are also fundamentally changing how we allocate council funding, to deliver a fairer, more up-to-date, more transparent way of allocating taxpayers’ money. It must be right to explore how we can bring the increasingly convoluted and outdated funding formula into the 21st century, and how we can better link the funding of public services to the needs of individual local authorities. There is no question but that the fair funding review is a substantial piece of work. There are many different views on the way forward, which raise challenging questions that we will need to work through in the months ahead. We plan to consult widely on our proposals this spring, and to listen to the views that we receive. In that spirit, I hope that we in the House can work together to build consensus, and move forward to a better funding formula.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for mentioning the pockets of deprivation in shire counties; I could certainly take him to some in High Wycombe. He talks about fair funding; those of us on the fringes of our major cities have additional pressures, as people who need additional services come to live in our area. Together with the Chancellor, will he consider how we can ensure that the fringes of not just London, but all our major cities, are equipped to deal with the extra pressures that they face?
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Knowing something of his constituency, I think it is the perfect example of a part of the country where there is great affluence, but also significant pockets of deprivation. We need to ensure that funding for local authorities that provide public services is based on the actual needs of the community, not a formula dreamed up many years ago.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Forty-one per cent. of children in Birmingham are growing up in poverty. Nearly half a million Birmingham citizens live in some of the most deprived areas of Britain. Birmingham is on track for £784 million-worth of cuts to its budget. Its workforce has been cut in half. Children’s centres and youth centres are closing, with catastrophic consequences for the city. The Secretary of State referred to the Local Government Association’s assessment of the fair funding review on social care funding. Is it not the case that its assessment is that the current direction of travel will see money channelled from high-need areas such as Birmingham to lower-need areas like Surrey and Buckinghamshire?
Robert Jenrick
That is not the view of the LGA. After the Labour party issued a press release suggesting something along those lines, the LGA gave the clarification that it is impossible to speculate because we have not published the figures; we have not published our consultation. So with great respect to the hon. Gentleman, he will have to wait until—[Interruption.] Well, it was the Labour group on the LGA. I am not going to base my views on the press releases of the LGA’s Labour politicians; I am going to base them on the reality of what we intend to bring forward in future.
On the serious point that the hon. Gentleman raises, we will be consulting in the spring, and that will address issues important issues such as that. I hope that he, Birmingham City Council and others who take an interest in these matters will participate in that consultation. We will of course listen to his views as we bring forward a better settlement that attempts to work for all parts of the country. The settlement that we are voting on today is a good settlement for Birmingham. It provides a 6.4% increase in funding, or £27 million additional funding, for social care.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the problem in Birmingham is that the Labour administration simply cannot control a budget or deliver services properly? For instance, it spent £15 million on resolving the bin dispute, we have a budget for a bus depot that has gone from £2 million to £15 million, and £100 million for all three phases of the Paradise development was spent in the first phase. The problem is that Labour councillors cannot manage a budget.
Robert Jenrick
What a refreshing change it is to have my hon. Friend in the House representing Birmingham in the way he does. He is absolutely right that Birmingham City Council has a lamentable record of delivering public services. It cannot even manage the bins in Birmingham. That is why we were forced to bring independent non-executive directors into the council to monitor its performance. I want to see it improved in the years ahead, and I am sure that he will be holding it to account very robustly in this House.
Let me turn to the broader agenda that we will be pursuing in this Parliament. A new approach to funding is an important moment for local government, but this is just the beginning of our ambitions for local democracy. I want to work with councils on the overriding mission of this Government, which is to level up all parts of the country. That means, at every level of government, from Whitehall to town halls, delivering on the priorities of the British people. It means building on the success of the devolution revolution that we pursued in the last Parliament with our regional Mayors, who already cover one third of the population of England and 50% of the population of the north.
I want us to secure more devolution deals like the ones raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas). We have already made progress since the general election in Sheffield. That deal is now, I hope, unlocked, and we will see the Mayor there assuming the full powers as soon as possible. We have also made progress with other important parts of the country, including Leeds and West Yorkshire—I sincerely hope that those deals will proceed at pace—and we are opening discussions with several other areas. Some seek the powers and responsibilities of the proven mayoral model to emulate the impact of great Mayors such as Andy Street and Ben Houchen. Others seek the greater ability to plan and to deliver strategically that comes with a combined authority or a unitary authority. We will support, encourage and incentivise each of those reforms in any part of the country that shares our determination to move forward.
Mr Betts
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way again. I very much welcome the Sheffield city region deal, and I want to pay credit to the previous Northern Powerhouse Minister, the right hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), for the perseverance he showed in trying to get all the authorities in the city region together to do that deal. Does the Secretary of State agree that any powers that other mayors have must now be made available to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), Mayor of the Sheffield city region?
Robert Jenrick
I happily join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen and others in this House, including the hon. Gentleman, who have persevered with that devolution deal, which at times seemed a forlorn cause but now appears finally on course to being fully implemented. We have made it clear that we will be offering all existing mayors the full suite of powers that are available to Andy Burnham as the Mayor of Greater Manchester, with the exception of the health powers that he exercises—I think there is widespread agreement that a degree of further thought is required before we roll out those powers in other parts of the country, but we are certainly not opposed to doing so once we have given that more time and consideration.
Our English devolution White Paper will look to spread the benefits of greater control to all parts of the country, and this is the right time to do it. At the start of a new Administration and at a moment of national renewal, we must seize the opportunity to reform local government and give more powers back to the public.
Levelling up means firing up our towns through our £3.6 billion towns fund, so that they can be engines of opportunity and growth. From St Ives to Stocksbridge, towns and their local councils are engaging actively in that, using the towns fund to attract private investment and invest in transport, skills, culture and technology.
It means pulling out all the stops to deliver 1 million homes over this Parliament and nurturing places that inspire pride and a strong sense of belonging. I firmly believe that we can build the houses that our country needs—houses of all types, including more affordable homes—while also building safer, greener, more beautiful homes in communities that foster neighbourliness and a true sense of identity. We will be asking a lot of councils. We will be asking them to deliver the housing need of their communities, and in some cases, to do so without encouraging needless urban sprawl or the ruination of the countryside and a loss of the green belt. That will mean that they will have to be ambitious and to develop brownfield land aggressively, as we are seeing in some of the best parts of the country. It will mean reimagining town centres and building upwards with gentle density.
No one can abdicate responsibility for meeting the acute housing needs of our country, and some councils are already leading the way in doing that. Last week, I wrote to councils that are exceeding the housing need of their communities to thank and praise them. I hope that more councils will follow their example, and we will support and incentivise councils in the years ahead to do so.
The investment that we make today is part of a wider picture of investment to renew communities and to address the priorities of the public, which we promised to do in the general election and for which we were lent the support of millions of people across the country, and we now need to repay the trust that they placed in us. We heard about some of that investment earlier today, with the recruitment of 20,000 extra police officers over the next three years.
It also means investing over £14 billion more in our schools between now and 2022—an extra £150 million a week and the largest cash boost in a generation. It means putting more money into our buses, with an extra £220 million in our national bus strategy and £5 billion for buses, cycling and walking, which will play an important part in the lives of all our constituents. It means upgrading our local roads, backed by £28 billion of investment, and more money for potholes. It means committing to fund the Leeds-to-Manchester route as the first stop on our journey to deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail. It means committing to High Speed 2—the spine of the country’s transport network—alongside radical improvements to local transport networks all across the country. It means investing £500 million in new youth clubs and services, and creating a £250 million cultural investment fund to support local libraries, museums and social and cultural capital in our communities.
Thanks to the almost £3 billion of extra investment that we are providing, this settlement will see constituencies in every corner of England getting more money next year, while protecting taxpayers. That means more money for the most vulnerable and the key public services on which we all depend, and a sound basis on which local government can build for the future with confidence. Let us get behind this settlement and allow that good work to begin today.
Local Government Finance
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Today I laid before the House the “Local Government Finance Report (England) 2020-21”, the “Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Principles) (England) Report 2020-21” and the “Referendums Relating to Council Tax Increases (Alternative Notional Amounts) (England) Report 2020-21” which represent the final local government finance settlement for 2020-21.
This year’s settlement delivers an increase in core spending power from £46.2 billion in 2019-20 to £49.2 billion in 2020-21. In real terms this is a 4.4% increase and the largest year on year real-terms increase in a decade.
The local government finance settlement relies on collaboration. My Ministers and I have engaged extensively with the sector, holding meetings with representative groups, with councils, and with MPs. During this process, we received over 200 representations from organisations or individuals, and these have been carefully considered before finalising the settlement. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all colleagues in the House, and council leaders and officers, who have contributed to the consultation process.
This year’s settlement is a strong and well-balanced package that delivers significant extra resources to the priority areas of adult and children’s social care, whilst protecting other vital service areas.
Extra social care resources
This Government are serious about protecting the millions of people who rely upon adult and children’s social care in their daily lives. To do this, this settlement will allow local authorities to access an additional £1.5 billion for social care. This comprises £1 billion of additional grant—for both adult and children’s social care—and a proposed 2% council tax precept for adult social care, which will enable councils to access a further £500 million. Some £150 million of the additional grant will be used to equalise the distributional impact of the adult social care council tax precept.
These additional resources sit on top of the existing social care package, which will continue at 2019-20 levels, and mean that local authorities will have access to almost £6 billion of dedicated funding across adult and children’s social care in 2020-21.
Core settlement resources
The local government finance settlement for 2020-21 will also protect other key services by providing a uniform percentage uplift in core settlement resources, in line with the change in the small business rates multiplier. Vital services are also protected by continuing other key grants from 2019-20.
Council tax
Local authorities will continue to be able to increase council tax in 2020-21 by a core principle of up to 2%, without holding a local referendum, with a bespoke council tax referendum principle of 2% or £5, whichever is higher, for shire district councils, and a £10 Band D council tax referendum principle for all police authorities. Authorities with adult social care responsibilities will be able to increase their council tax by a further 2% on top of the core principle, without holding a local referendum, to be spent exclusively on adult social care.
The proposed referendum principles strike a balance between giving local authorities the flexibility to address service pressures, and not overburdening council tax payers with excessive increases which do not have local support.
The 2020-21 final local government finance settlement will mean that the expected average council tax increase for 2020-21 will be the lowest since 2016.
New homes bonus
The Government will be making a new round of allocations of the new homes bonus for 2020-21, amounting to £907 million.
As part of this, I am committing an additional £7 million to maintain the growth baseline for payments at 0.4%. We will make no legacy payments on these new allocations, but the Government will make legacy payments on allocations made in earlier years which are due to be paid in 2020-21.
In order to ensure that the new homes bonus is focused on incentivising homes where they are needed most, I am announcing that the Government will consult on the future of the housing incentive in the spring. This will include moving to a new, more targeted approach that rewards local authorities where they are ambitious in delivering the homes we need.
Rural services delivery grant
We will continue to recognise the extra costs of delivering services in rural areas and propose to maintain last year’s rural services delivery grant of £81 million, which is the joint-highest paid to date. It will be distributed using the same methodology as in 2019-20, which allocated funding to the top quartile of local authorities on the “super-sparsity” indicator.
Conclusion
This settlement acts as the foundation for a robust and resilient future for local government finance, delivering on calls for certainty and stability from local government. For those who deliver key front-line services, it provides significant extra resources where they are needed most.
I look forward to debating this topic with all MPs next week.
[HCWS102]
Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission Report
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
The Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission has published its final report today. I am depositing this report in the Libraries of both Houses and have made it available on www.gov.uk. I would like to thank the commissioners for all of their hard work in producing the report. The Government will provide a response in due course.
[HCWS81]
Homelessness
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
I beg to move an amendment, line 1, to leave out from “House” to end and add:
“notes the Government’s commitment to ending rough-sleeping in this Parliament; further notes that the latest annual figures showed a fall in rough sleeping numbers; notes the steps already taken by the Government including implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 and delivering successful programmes like the Rough Sleeping Initiative and Housing First pilots; welcomes the Government’s commitment of £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping; notes the Secretary of State’s announcement this week of an extra £112 million for the Government’s Rough Sleeping Initiative, taking the total sum being invested over the next year to £437 million; notes this House’s concern that more is done to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping so that everyone has access to accommodation when they need it most; and notes the clear steps this Government is taking to achieve this.”
We are fortunate to live in a country that is widely and rightly regarded as one of the most fair, prosperous and advanced in the world. It is, therefore, a serious moral failure that we still have people sleeping on our streets and struggling to secure something so basic as a roof over their heads. That feels especially poignant at this time of year, when most of us take for granted a warm bed on a cold night. The deaths of people sleeping rough right here on the doorsteps of Parliament in recent years have been a sobering reminder of the challenges we face. That was brought home to me powerfully when I volunteered at a homeless shelter in Birmingham on Christmas day, and when I had the privilege of meeting a lady called Claire in Walsall just before Christmas, who is one of over 200 people to have been helped off the streets by the Housing First pilots. Initiatives such as Housing First give us all some hope.
Robert Jenrick
I will come to the hon. Gentleman in a moment.
The figures showing that rough sleeping fell last year, for the first time in several years, give us evidence that these policies are working, but there is clearly a lot more to be done. Everything begins with a stable home and somewhere to put down roots, which is why the Government have made it their overriding priority to reduce all forms of homelessness and to end rough sleeping during this Parliament.
Mr Perkins
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I appreciate the tone of his rhetoric, but it bears no relation to the performance of the Government’s policies over the past nine and a half years. He talks about homelessness as though it remained a problem, but it is an escalating problem. It is a problem that is running out of control on this Government’s watch. When he comes back to the Dispatch Box, will he not talk about homelessness as though what we are seeing is a continuation of a longstanding problem? What we are seeing under his Government is as a result of his policies. The situation is getting—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Let us make this clear from the start: we cannot have long interventions. If Members make long interventions at the beginning of the debate, those sitting here hoping to speak at the end will get only two minutes, and that is really not fair. We must have short interventions.
Robert Jenrick
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As I said, the figures for the past year suggest we are seeing a reduction in street homelessness—a modest reduction, I admit, of 2%, but a reduction none the less. We will not find out the official figures for the most recent count taken in November until next month, but having been to a number of local authorities across the country in recent weeks and spoken to them it seems to me that we will see a further, more significant fall in rough sleeping when we receive those figures. I have not for one moment suggested that that is an end in itself. We need to go much further and much faster. In my remarks, I will set out exactly what this new Conservative Government intend to do.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am glad the Secretary of State raised Housing First. I know he will join me in congratulating Councillor Yvonne Davies and Councillor Sharon Thompson, who had to take back control of delivering it to drive some of the reductions we have seen in the west midlands. The point really is this: for Housing First to work, we first need houses. The truth is that the number of social homes built in the west midlands has fallen by 17% in the past year and by 18% since 2010. Surely that must be turned around.
Robert Jenrick
I am very happy to praise anybody who has been involved in Housing First. As I said, a few days before Christmas I visited a Housing First pilot in Walsall and was tremendously impressed by the work there. I met a lady who had been taken off the streets in Walsall. She had been sleeping rough in a park for a long time, but was spending her first Christmas for a number of years in a home of her own and would shortly be having her children over for Christmas lunch, which she had not managed to enjoy, I think, for over decade. It is a tribute to the housing associations that are willing to participate in Housing First. I want more housing associations to do so. We will clearly need to provide both the funding and the certainty of that funding, because it is a significant endeavour for a housing association. That housing association, for example, is not only giving property and a home to that lady, but promising to provide wrap-around care, an individual to visit or phone that person, every day for up to three years. That is an incredibly sophisticated and bespoke level of care, but one that is working extremely well.
Emma Hardy
The Secretary of State must have heard me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) that eviction rates for tenants on universal credit are three times higher than for tenants who are not on universal credit. What conversations is the Secretary of State having with the Department for Work and Pensions about how to stop the high eviction rate of tenants on universal credit?
Robert Jenrick
I speak regularly with my colleagues at the DWP, including the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who is sitting beside me. However, we do not recognise those figures. For example, the figures that I have seen most recently show that for individuals who come on to universal credit with pre-existing rent arrears we see a one-third reduction in rent arrears after four months. The statistics that I have seen are far more encouraging than those given by the hon. Lady.
Several hon. Members rose—
Robert Jenrick
I will make some progress, as I think Madam Deputy Speaker asked me to.
The question of funding seems to have been at the heart of the debate so far. We are backing our commitment to this agenda with very substantial funding. Yesterday, I announced that we will take the total sum being invested in this challenge next year to £437 million. That is on top of the £1.2 billion that has already been committed, marking a £69 million increase in funding from the current financial year, and £15 million more than we committed at the spending round a few months ago.
However, we are not stopping there. The Government have already made good on their promise to end the benefits freeze, with benefits due to rise in line with inflation from April. The majority of people in receipt of housing support in the private rented sector will see their housing support increase. In our 2019 manifesto, the Government committed to introducing a new stamp duty land tax surcharge on non-UK residents buying residential property in England and Northern Ireland, with that revenue going to support rough sleepers. No one should sleep rough on our streets. That is why we are focused on helping those living on the streets now, as well as ensuring that we consign rough sleeping to history once and for all.
John Redwood
Does my right hon. Friend agree that people sleeping rough quite often have drink or drug addiction problems, for example, and that we need to persuade them to get help? Are there not generous programmes to deal with those kinds of issues? [Interruption.]
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right and I do not understand the chatter from Opposition Members. The street homelessness challenge that this country faces is not simply a housing issue but an issue of addiction and mental health, and this Government intend to bring those together for the first time in a properly co-ordinated approach between our Departments.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State referred to the local housing allowance. About a year ago, the National Audit Office did a damning report for the Public Accounts Committee, stating that the Government had done no proper analysis of the connection between their welfare reform policies and homelessness. Will he rectify that with his colleagues in the DWP and produce such an analysis for the House?
Robert Jenrick
I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are working together very closely—I regularly meet my colleagues in the DWP, and in fact we will meet this week. All our proposals will be co-ordinated and done jointly because we understand that this issue needs to be joined up—not just with the DWP, as I said, but with the Health Secretary, so that we get the added links to addiction and mental health, and the Home Secretary, so that the law enforcement side of this works together. We will be taking forward a co-ordinated strategy across all Departments.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
As the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster, I know a thing or two about rough sleeping, with Westminster having more rough sleepers than the next three boroughs combined. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need a multifaceted approach? It is about mental health. It is about drug addiction. This is not just about homelessness and rough sleeping, particularly in places such as central London and other main cities in the United Kingdom.
Robert Jenrick
My hon. Friend speaks with great personal experience and she is right; we must all beware of resorting to simple explanations for this complex challenge. It is about bringing together all the relevant authorities; where homelessness has been tackled most successfully, that is exactly what is happening. The other day I visited St Mungo’s, who are excellent at bringing together the police, local councils, central Government, the NHS and others. Yesterday I was at Newham, where the council is doing exactly that, with a superb supported housing centre called Anchor House.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that St Mungo’s started the campaign on rough sleeping, in the late 1980s, with a lot of Conservatives supporting it? The initiatives that John Major’s Government put in place under Sir George Young, as he then was, were the start of the work to really try to solve the problem. [Interruption.] It is not true to say that the Conservatives did not do anything in the 1990s; I was here and they did. The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) was not.
Robert Jenrick
I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. I am very happy to pay tribute to the fantastic work of St Mungo’s. As I said, it pioneered bringing together all the parts of government, central and local. That really has an impact.
Robert Jenrick
I will give way in a moment, if I may.
The strategy that we published in 2018, backed at that time by a £100 million package, is a vital step towards our shared goal. The strategy is built around three pillars: first, preventing rough sleeping before it happens; secondly, intervening at crisis points; and, thirdly, helping people to recover with flexible support that meets their needs.
Stuart Anderson (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware of the great work being done in Wolverhampton by Good Shepherd Ministry and other such organisations. What is he doing in this Parliament to end rough sleeping?
Robert Jenrick
I will come on to the strategy. I know the Good Shepherd centre’s work; in fact, I volunteered there as a child, growing up in Wolverhampton.
The centre of our work is our rough sleeping initiative. That involves our team of rough sleeping advisers working closely with local authorities to deliver vital services to help people who are sleeping rough. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to those local authorities, and the charities and organisations and their volunteers, who are taking part in the RSI. Our evaluation concluded that the rough sleeping initiative was working. It is seeing an almost one-third reduction in vulnerable people sleeping rough in those areas that are funded by the initiative, compared with what would have happened if those areas had not been part of the initiative.
Robert Jenrick
We are keen for more parts of the country to benefit from the initiative.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way; he has been very generous. I have had constituents living in tents, cars—one even in a cave. All those cases—I have many more, and I am not just talking about street homelessness—were related to problems with social security. Two thirds of local authorities predict that the roll-out of universal credit will increase homelessness. What are the assessments of both the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince)?
Robert Jenrick
I think I have answered that question. We do not recognise some of the figures that we have heard. In fact, the evidence that I have seen has suggested that rent arrears have fallen over time, in the case of those individuals who have moved on to universal credit.
To support the rough sleeping initiative programmes such as those that I have visited in recent months, I allocated this week up to £112 million to fund the programme for a third year. That represents a 30% increase in funding for this already proven successful programme. Councils, charities and organisations throughout the country will be able to use that money to fund up to 6,000 new bed spaces and 2,500 rough sleeping support staff.
Layla Moran
The Secretary of State is being very generous in giving way. I am pleased to hear him outline the strategy for rough sleeping, but is he aware that rough sleeping in this country is illegal, under the Vagrancy Act 1824, which is still on the statute book? We are running a campaign with St Mungo’s, Crisis and others to have it repealed.
Robert Jenrick
As the hon. Lady may know, we are reviewing the Act; we are very aware of that and want to see it changed.
We are determined to build on the work of our Housing First programme pilots, which we have already heard about. The pilots, in Greater Manchester, the west midlands and the Liverpool city region, have already helped more than 200 people off the streets and into a home and provided each with a dedicated support worker. A further 800 people are due to benefit by the end of the programme.
Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way—he has been extremely generous with interventions. Does he agree we should commend organisations such as Dogs on the Street, which cares for homeless people with pets? Those pets very often are people’s only lifeline, yet it is difficult to get into a hostel if you have a pet. That must be addressed.
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady makes an important point. Anybody who has spent time meeting rough sleepers, particularly those who slept rough for a longer period, will know that a dog can be an incredibly important companion, and it is true that a large proportion of shelters do not take individuals with pets, although some do—in fact most of those I have visited recently, particularly in central London, allow them. Nevertheless, I would encourage shelters to find a way through this problem, because it is a significant issue.
I turn now to the issue we have already discussed around health and the underlying causes of rough sleeping. In 2018, 41% of the rough-sleeping population in London were assessed as having a drug dependency need, 42% as having an alcohol dependency issue, and 50% as having a mental health support need. Recent figures also show that 80% of rough sleepers who died in London had mental health needs. The data is very clear: people sleeping rough with a mental health condition are significantly more likely to die than those without a mental health need.
We must not forget that behind each statistic is an individual with their own story. They all deserve the support we can give them. That is why my Department is now working closely with the Department for Health and Social Care to ensure they get the support they need. That support includes £30 million in funding from NHS England to support specialist mental health services and £2 million to help test different models of community-based healthcare, particularly focused on substance misuse and mental health treatment. I can assure the House that as we progress and develop our rough sleeping strategy we will do everything we can to co-ordinate it with the Department for Health and Social Care.
Mike Amesbury
If the Secretary of State was to be kicked out of his house and find himself in the unfortunate circumstance of living on the street, of course mental health issues, depression, drug dependency and alcoholism might then result, but the Government have cut homelessness support by £1 billion a year over the last decade—this is nothing new—and cuts have consequences. I think, for example, of the 726 people—an increase of 50%—who lost their lives last year
Robert Jenrick
As I have said, we are increasing funding for this issue. We are spending £1.2 billion. This year, we are adding £430 million and more—for example, the £112 million I have devoted this year to the rough sleeping initiative. That is a 30% increase, and the funding the previous year was more than the year before that, so the Government are giving this national issue the resources it deserves. I hope that meets with approval across the House.
We are also taking action by implementing the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, which will play a crucial role in tackling this issue. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and all those who played an instrumental role in taking this ambitious legislative reform forward. It means that everyone, not just those deemed a priority, can get the support they need to prevent them from becoming homeless. The legislation also means that people can access support earlier, with new duties on public bodies, from the NHS to our prisons, to intervene earlier, and councils are now providing support of up to 56 days, ahead of someone needing help finding secure accommodation.
Since the Act was implemented, more than 130,000 households have had their homelessness successfully prevented or relieved, and nearly two thirds of the applicants receiving help have been single households who previously would have been less likely to have been offered support.
The duty to refer, which came into force in October 2018, is also encouraging strong local partnerships. It requires public authorities such as our prisons, our emergency departments and Jobcentre Plus to refer service users who they think may be homeless, or threatened with homelessness, to a local housing authority of their choice. That is a clear example of public services working closely together in the interests of the most vulnerable in our society.
We are also taking decisive action on the delivery of fairer, more affordable housing of all tenures, so that we can prevent and reduce homelessness and rough sleeping. The Government have delivered more than 464,000 affordable homes since 2010. Our commitment to increasing the housing supply means that we will go even further than that, delivering, on average, more affordable homes each year than the last Labour Government—and there is more to come, with 250,000 more new affordable homes due to be delivered by March 2022 through the affordable homes programme, which we have boosted with a further £9 billion.
In our manifesto we committed ourselves to a further affordable homes programme, which I hope will be even more ambitious. That commitment is underlined by our manifesto pledge to publish a social housing White Paper, which will set out more measures to empower tenants, provide greater redress and better regulation, and improve the quality of social housing.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has agreed to introduce a Bill that will, hopefully, get rid of no-fault evictions and to provide a decent redress system. Will he meet me, and some representatives of Shelter? I presented a ten-minute rule Bill in the last Parliament that would pay for some of that, protecting deposits and allowing a disputes resolution mechanism, and working out some of the details so that we do not have to do it through amendment.
Robert Jenrick
I should be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. He will not be surprised to hear that we have already met a range of stakeholders, including representatives of Shelter and other important organisations, to discuss this issue. We want to ensure that the social housing White Paper does the job that is required, and we are working closely with organisations such as Grenfell United to learn the lessons of that tragedy. We are also working with organisations such as Shelter in connection with our Renters’ Rights Bill, which will bring an end to no-fault evictions and create other important initiatives, including a lifetime deposit which will help those on low incomes and others throughout society by making it easier and cheaper for tenants to move.
We have a clear plan—backed by substantial investment and a proactive approach, and widely welcomed—to tackle homelessness and end rough sleeping for good. As the Prime Minister has made clear, that is an absolute priority for him and for this new Government. We are encouraged by the progress that we have made on rough sleeping in the last two years, and through measures such as the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017, the Housing First pilots and the rough sleeping initiative we are seeing results, but we know that we have to go much further to give some of the most vulnerable people in our society the future they deserve. I believe we can do this; I believe we must do this; and, as a compassionate, one nation Conservative Government, we will not rest until we achieve it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Before I call the spokesman for the Scottish National party, I should give notice that, as we have only two hours left for this debate and it is obvious that a great many Members wish to speak, we will start with a time limit of six minutes, but that will soon be reduced to considerably less. The time limit does not, of course, apply to Mr David Linden.
ENABLE Build Guarantee Scheme
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Today, I am laying before Parliament a departmental minute setting out the details of a contingent liability that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government intends to take on. The contingent liability will be created by the £1 billion ENABLE Build guarantee scheme.
ENABLE Build—announced at autumn Budget 2018 and launched in May 2019—is being delivered through the British Business Bank with the support of Homes England. Under the scheme the Ministry is guaranteeing loan portfolios of new lending to smaller housebuilders in order to encourage additional lending.
A lack of development finance has been identified as a barrier preventing smaller builders from delivering more. Through this scheme the Government will support SME housebuilders to grow and get Britain building the homes we need.
[HCWS74]
Rough Sleeping Initiative
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
Today, I am announcing provisional allocations of up to £112 million for a third year of rough sleeping initiative and rapid rehousing pathway funding. This funding covers around 270 local authorities in England, including those that were part of joint funding proposals and represents an uplift of £26 million on last year’s rough sleeping initiative and rapid rehousing pathway funding.
We announced the rough sleeping initiative in March 2018 to make an immediate impact on rough sleeping. Our impact evaluation of the initiative (published September 2019) demonstrated that it drove the first national reduction in rough sleeping in almost a decade. The analysis demonstrated a 32% net reduction in the number of rough sleepers, compared to what the level would have been had the initiative not been in place.
To build on the rough sleeping initiative, we launched the rapid rehousing pathway. This approach includes funding for Somewhere Safe to Stay hubs, which provide warm and dry shelter, rapid assessment, and support to people who are already, or at risk of, sleeping rough; specialist navigators, who act as a single point of contact to support people from the streets into settled accommodation; the establishment of local lettings agencies to source, identify, or provide homes and advice for rough sleepers or those at risk; and funding for supported lettings initiatives, which will provide flexible support to help individuals sustain their tenancies.
For the next financial year we have combined the rough sleeping initiative and rapid rehousing pathway to form one consolidated funding pot for 2020-21, to simplify the process for local authorities. We have drawn on learnings from both programmes to optimise the effectiveness of next year’s funding, which was open to all local authorities in England. Since October 2019 our expert adviser teams have worked intensively with local authorities to co-produce plans to further reduce rough sleeping.
A full list of the areas funded is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rough-sleeping-initiative-2020-to-2021-funding-allocations.
With the funding I have announced today, local areas will be able to enhance services that connect people with the right support and sustainable housing to move them swiftly away from the street and facilitate their recovery. This important work is part of delivering on the commitment made in the Government manifesto to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.
[HCWS69]
Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 1 Report
Robert Jenrick Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 1 Report.
It is now over two and a half years since the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, and I believe I speak for all Members of this House when I say that we once again offer the 72 victims, the bereaved, the survivors and everyone affected our profound condolences. They remain in our thoughts and prayers. They seek answers, accountability, justice and action to ensure that this terrible tragedy is never repeated. That is why yesterday I set out our immediate plans to improve building safety in this country. Getting this right is a priority for this new Government and the Prime Minister, and it is something that I will personally be taking forward at pace.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way so early in his speech. He refers to the statement he made yesterday. I welcome the decision in that statement to consult on ensuring that building regulations are relevant to buildings of a lower height, but he talked about that being relevant to new buildings and not to existing buildings. He will know from the fire at Samuel Garside House in my constituency that that was an existing building, and that it went up in just six minutes. If the fire had happened in the middle of night, it could have led to huge loss of life. Fortunately it did not, but I ask him to consider whether the regulations should not also be relevant to existing buildings, as well as to new buildings of a lower height.
Robert Jenrick
I will come to that issue in a moment. The right hon. Lady and I have worked together on this and she has been a strong advocate for her constituents after the fire in Barking.
The announcement we made yesterday goes further. It says that we will be working with experts to develop a far more sophisticated measure of safety in buildings than simply the crude one of height alone that has existed for decades in this country. Once we have arrived at that, it will inform all the actions that building owners will have to take. It is the responsibility of building owners to take a view of building safety through an independent assessment of risk in that building that bears in mind all the characteristics of the building, whether it be the height, the residents in the building, the fire safety system or—as with the fire in Barking—balconies and other materials that are used on the building.
Robert Jenrick
If I could perhaps make some progress, I will come to the points around building safety in a moment and return to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell).
As I have said, getting this right will be a priority for the Government, for the Prime Minister and for myself. We will be introducing two Bills: one to deal with the immediate fire safety issues that we have identified, and another that will bring in the biggest change to building regulations in almost 40 years. Having met families of the bereaved and survivors, some of whom join us in the Gallery today, I remain acutely aware of our responsibility to ensure that they continue to receive the support they need and to see the change that they rightly demand. They have shown incredible resilience and acted not just with great dignity but with great courage. Their voices are being heard, and they must continue to be. On 30 October last year I stood in the House with the Prime Minister following the publication of the Grenfell inquiry’s phase 1 report, which covered the events of the night. Our immediate response was to accept in principle all the findings of the report that relate to the Government. Since then, we have worked at pace to deliver the Government’s response, which I am setting out today.
Sir Martin’s report provides a detailed, minute-by-minute account of what happened on the evening of 14 June 2017. It is built around the testimony of survivors and of the fire and rescue team involved in the response. The report made very important recommendations, including new duties for building owners; operational changes for the London Fire Brigade and, indeed, for fire and rescue services more widely, as well as for emergency services across the country; and addressing the continued presence of unsafe cladding on buildings.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Robert Jenrick
If I may, I will come to my hon. Friend in a moment.
I will now turn to the actions the Government have taken since receiving the report. First, in response to Sir Martin’s findings that there was compelling evidence that the external walls on Grenfell Tower were not compliant with building regulations—this was an important finding—we are wasting no time in addressing this. The Home Office will introduce the fire safety Bill in the coming weeks so that the necessary changes are made as soon as possible. This Bill will leave building owners in no doubt that external wall systems, including cladding, and front doors to individual flats in multi-occupied residential buildings fall within the scope of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. This means that they must assess the risk and they must take precautionary measures to keep people safe. The fire safety Bill will also make clear the enforcement powers that can be taken locally against building owners who have not remediated unsafe ACM—aluminium composite material— cladding. This Bill will be the first step towards the new regulatory framework that will implement the recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 1 and the regulatory requirements to do so.
Lucy Powell
I thank the Secretary of State for the tone in which he is conducting this debate, and indeed in which he has been leading on these issues since he took over. Could he clarify whether this new body will mean that residents such as mine in Skyline Central 1, who are facing £25,000 bills each being passed on by the building owner, can have recourse back to the building owner, who would have to meet the cost of their now unsafe building?
Robert Jenrick
That will depend on the exact legal relationship in the building in question, and I am very happy to work with the hon. Lady to help investigate that. It is the responsibility of building owners to take action and, as she rightly mentions, many have for various reasons passed that on to leaseholders. I am acutely aware, as I said in the House yesterday, that some leaseholders feel trapped and unable to fund the mediation works that now need to happen, and that costs should not be a bar to that. As I said yesterday, we are now working with the Treasury to see if there are ways of providing financing to support those individuals.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for being generous with his time. On that very point, he mentions having conversations with the Treasury to look at different options—he said this in his statement yesterday—but is there any set timeline for the conversations that he will have with the Treasury on this point? I ask, because leaseholders have been in this position for two years and seven months, so the sooner we can resolve how to support them so that they do not to have to front the costs of any remediation works, the better. What is the timeline that he has with the Treasury to ensure that this can be sped up, because it has been over two years?
Robert Jenrick
I cannot give the hon. Lady an exact timetable, but it is worth saying that we have already—I will come on to this in my remarks—made available £600 million for building owners in both the social sector and the private sector. On expert advice, I have targeted that public grant funding towards ACM-clad buildings of over 18 metres. I will say again that all of the expert opinion I have seen has confirmed the decision that those are the most unsafe buildings and that they should be the priority for public funding. A number of building owners are already helping to remove cladding in their own buildings, and coming up with funding arrangements to help leaseholders to meet those costs, such as low-cost or zero-interest loan schemes. If the Government can assist in that, I think we should do so, because we want to see this cladding removed as soon as possible.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
May I slightly extend that point, as these issues reach across the Floor? Since the terrible Grenfell disaster, people in a privately owned block of flats in my constituency have faced massively increased insurance costs. They have been unable to get anyone to give them a confirmed view about the cladding, or to receive information from the fire brigade about the real nature of the threat and danger. Everybody has run for cover, and as result those people have already spent a vast amount of money—they are not wealthy people. They have now been told that the cladding does not pose a threat, but they have a backwash of costs and are still affected by this issue. Will the Secretary of State consider whether insurance companies, and others, should have been charging leaseholders those extra costs until it had been confirmed that there was a real threat?
Robert Jenrick
I would be happy to take up the individual case raised by my right hon. Friend, and the wider point. We are working closely with the insurance industry. This issue involves a range of materials, the most dangerous of which is ACM cladding, which was on Grenfell Tower. That has been the focus of public money. It is the responsibility of all building owners to have an independent assessment and ensure that the building is safe—it sounds as if that is what happened, perhaps belatedly, to the building in my right hon. Friend’s constituency. That assessment should provide the answers, after which remediation work, if necessary, needs to happen at pace. If I can help to support that in any way, I will.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
This inquiry is not about finding blame; it is about finding causes and rectifying the situation. In this case, the problems that have been created regarding the wider building stock and liability are no fault of property owners, tenants or leaseholders, and that leaves a liability that falls on the Government, at least to a degree. Otherwise, there will be widening injustice, bankruptcy and failures across a whole sector of housing, because we are trying to remediate the failure of regulation in the past.
Robert Jenrick
The question at the heart of my hon. Friend’s remarks is what the judge will determine in the second phase of the inquiry. What went wrong that led to that cladding being on Grenfell Tower? Was it a failure of Government or of regulation of the construction industry, or a combination of those things? I do not think we can prejudge what the judge will determine over the course of the detailed second phase of the inquiry that is about to commence.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I have followed these matters over the past couple of years, and in my experience the Secretary of State has done more to try to resolve these problems than any of his predecessors, all of whom tried to tackle a thorny issue. He is right to say that ACM is probably the most dangerous cladding, and we should deal with that first. Advice Note 14 does not deal with ACM, but it does effectively say that other combustible materials should not be on the outside of high rise buildings. The official guidance was more equivocal than that, which leaves long leaseholders in a difficult situation with unsaleable properties—I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that regard. We must consider this issue. Yesterday the Secretary of State said that he would look at doing more, and we will need to.
Robert Jenrick
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who is a long-standing campaigner on this issue. Next month we will publish the final result of the testing process that my Department has been undertaking over many months with the Building Research Establishment. That will lay out for all to see evidence that I have already seen about the safety, or otherwise, of a range of different materials. I believe it will demonstrate that ACM is by far the most concerning material and should come off buildings as quickly as possible.
Robert Jenrick
I had better make some progress, but I will return to my hon. Friend in a moment.
The Bill we will bring forward later this year will be the first step towards the new regulatory framework that will implement the recommendations of the phase 1 report’s legislative requirements. Under the Bill, building owners and managers will be required to share information with fire and rescue services on external wall systems, and undertake regular inspections of flat entrance doors. The Home Office will consult on the detail of the proposals in spring this year.
That legislative action will address many of the inquiry’s recommendations and forms part of the wider Government response to ensure that action is taken against unsafe cladding. My Department has already introduced a ban on combustible materials on the external walls of new buildings over 18 metres, and, as I have said, made available £600 million in Government funding to support that work.
Sir Martin’s report concluded that it was not just the materials of the building that contributed to the tragedy: more people could have survived the fire had the London Fire Brigade conducted a full evacuation earlier in the night. He recognises existing Government guidance stating that fire and rescue services should have contingency plans for when a building needs full or partial evacuation, and noted that the London Fire Brigade policies were in this respect deficient.
Andy Slaughter
In the Minister’s statement yesterday there was not anything that I saw about evacuation and changes to the stay-put policy, which would be a huge change that would have implications for means of escape, alarms, sprinkler systems and so on. When can we expect the Government to pronounce on that?
Robert Jenrick
I will come on to that point in just a moment, if I may.
Sir Martin recommended that the Government produce national guidelines for carrying out the evacuation of high rise residential buildings. I am now working closely with colleagues in the Home Office on those guidelines. My Department and the Home Office have formed a steering group with the National Fire Chiefs Council and other experts, which met for the first time in December. The group agreed on the scope of an evidence review into stay put and evacuation. Let me reiterate, however, that the advice from the National Fire Chiefs Council is that stay put remains an appropriate policy providing compartmentation is maintained. In fact, Sir Martin highlighted that effective compartmentation is likely to remain at the heart of fire safety and the response to fires in high rise buildings. I think that that is an important point that we should all bear in mind in how we communicate on these issues to members of the public.
A number of recommendations made by Sir Martin were for the London Fire Brigade, and for fire and rescue services more widely across the country. The firefighters serving that night showed exceptional bravery and dedication. I would like to pay tribute to their courage, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did last year. However, the report made very clear that there were failures in the London Fire Brigade’s response. Significant changes are needed in its policies, guidance and training, including on evacuation procedures. We know that fire and rescue services across the country need to have the training and processes in place to be able to respond as effectively as possible to fires in residential buildings. The control rooms that co-ordinate emergency responses must have the processes in place to deal with all incidents effectively.
I am pleased that London Fire Brigade has already rolled out fire survival guidance training, and is reviewing its policies and guidance in the light of the inquiry’s recommendations. It is important that all our emergency services have proper protocols in place to ensure that they can work together and communicate effectively in an emergency. The Home Office is working with the interoperability board to ensure that those lessons are learned. While these recommendations are not aimed directly at the Government, clearly the Government have a role and we will not sit back.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. As Home Secretary I chaired the board of JESIP, the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme. What is clear from Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s report, page 698, is that the protocol was not followed on the night of the Grenfell fire. He recommends changes to that protocol. Have the changes been put in place? Equally important, have frontline officers and staff of the three emergency services had the changes drawn to their attention, so that they know what they must do when they are working together in a major incident?
Robert Jenrick
My right hon. Friend makes a series of extremely important points. Those issues have been brought to the attention of all the emergency services; they are now working through them. The Home Office is helping to co-ordinate that work and, like her, I hope that those lessons are learned as quickly as possible so that if we are ever presented with a tragedy on this scale again all the emergency services can work together as one, in a co-ordinated way.
Fire and rescue services need urgently to address these issues and must set out their plans to do so. There have been some welcome developments, including, for example, that the London Fire Brigade now carries smoke hoods on its fire engines; that five pumps and a drone, rather than four pumps, are now deployed to fires in high-rise buildings; and that the London Fire Brigade has already taken steps to ensure that personnel understand the risk of fire taking hold in external wall systems. My hon. Friend the Minister for Crime, Policing and the Fire Service will address the House at the end of the debate on the work he is doing with the sector.
The work I have outlined shows the urgency with which we are addressing Sir Martin’s recommendations. The Government did not wait for the phase 1 report to begin addressing the most pressing building safety issues. We took immediate action in the aftermath of the fire with a comprehensive and independent review of building safety, chaired by Dame Judith Hackitt.
Bob Seely
It seems to me that ACM cladding, which my right hon. Friend addressed earlier, goes to the heart of the matter. How many high-rise buildings with unsafe ACM cladding have been identified and have had remedial treatment? How many others does he think still have to be identified, and what steps is he taking to do so?
Robert Jenrick
We are working very closely with the social sector and private owners. I am afraid that, frustratingly, progress has been extremely slow, as my hon. Friend and others across the House know. The fund that we opened for the taxpayer to pay for the remediation has so far seen only four successful applications. However, there is evidence that progress is moving at a pace that we have not seen before. There are now only 10 buildings in the private sector that have not begun the process of remediating, which means drawing up a plan and beginning with or contracting workers who can come on site and take away the cladding. There are exceptional circumstances with all those 10 buildings because, unfortunately, they have been identified only recently as having ACM cladding, so they have come to the process only over the course of the autumn. I want that work to proceed at a pace that we have not known before. As I said yesterday, we are now commissioning an independent building safety construction expert to advise my Department on how we can get that moving very quickly.
It was clear to me when I became Secretary of State—this was confirmed by Sir Martin’s report—that we need to go further to bring forward a series of very significant reforms and ensure that the work moves at pace. In response to Dame Judith Hackitt’s report, we are creating, immediately, the new building safety regulator. As I announced yesterday, we have chosen that that will be established within the Health and Safety Executive. The new regulator will raise building safety and performance standards. It will oversee a new and more stringent regime for high rise buildings and for higher risk buildings more generally.
Non-compliance is an issue in the industry, and the building safety legislation announced in the Queen’s Speech will ensure that the new regulator has the appropriate powers to sanction those responsible. This is a new and significantly tougher regime, underpinned by improved enforcement, dedicated to ensuring that our buildings are made with the necessary high safety standards and that the people within them always feel safe.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend refers to people who suffered from the fire. Can he confirm how many of those families are still waiting for permanent housing? If there are any, what is he doing to find them a permanent home speedily?
Robert Jenrick
Of the households who lived in Grenfell tower, 10 are yet to move into permanent accommodation. Of them, one is in hotel accommodation; the others are in high-quality temporary accommodation. Without going into the personal details of each household, which would not be appropriate, I can tell the House that I have personally reviewed the circumstances behind each of them, and my right hon. Friend the Housing Minister and I have worked closely with Kensington Council to review them again several times since coming to office. They are complex cases with a range of individual circumstances behind them, but we are hopeful that many of them will move into accommodation in which they feel comfortable as soon as possible.
Yesterday, I announced a series of new measures, including the appointment of a construction expert, to quicken the pace of the remediation of ACM cladding. I announced that I was minded to lower the height requirements for sprinklers in residential buildings from 18 metres to 11 metres, and I will set out a full proposal on how we intend to deliver that in February.
As I have stated, I have had the privilege of meeting survivors and their families and friends as well as people from across the community of north Kensington, and from the schools, such as Kensington Aldridge Academy and St Francis of Assisi Catholic Primary School, that provide a safe and caring space for children affected by the tragedy to reflect and remember their loved ones, to the worshippers at the Al-Manaar north Kensington mosque, who came together to support the community after the fire and continue to do so. One thing has been clear to me: this is a community of people who look after one another, who will continue to support one another and who will never forget what happened on the evening of the fire.
We owe it to them to ensure that their views are heard throughout our work, that justice is delivered and that the system is changed so that such a tragic fire can never happen again. That means reforming our building safety regime, but it also means reform of social housing to ensure tenants’ voices are heard and that their landlords provide good-quality, safe accommodation with strong and robust sanctions in place to hold them to account where that does not happen.
The Prime Minister and I have committed to bringing forward a social housing White Paper. This will set out further measures to empower tenants, hold social landlords to account and support the continued supply of social housing. This will include measures to provide for greater redress and better regulation and to improve the quality and safety of social housing.
Lucy Powell
Most people would welcome the White Paper the Secretary of State has just announced, but will he consider extending it to those living in private blocks? Many more people are now living in high rise blocks in city centres such as mine, but leaseholders have no rights against the building owners and very little recourse, and there is no teeth when the leasehold valuation tribunal or any other body finds in their favour. The need of private tenants and leaseholders for recourse is just as great.
Robert Jenrick
The hon. Lady makes several important points. Much of the work of the social housing White Paper will apply to private leaseholders, and of course we have a separate stream of work on reforming leasehold. We have already said we will shortly publish a draft Bill on leasehold reform, and we await the further reports from the Law Commission and then in time from the Competition and Markets Authority on leasehold, which will inform our work and I hope lead to significant legislation to reform the leasehold market later in this Parliament.
Dame Margaret Hodge
I am extremely grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way again. As he will remember, one of the issues that arose from the fire in Barking was the fact that none of the leaseholders had household insurance, so when they lost all the contents of their homes or the contents were damaged they had no recourse to insurance to replace them. Is he giving any consideration, in any of these reforms, to introducing a system whereby not only is building insurance imposed on leaseholders—presumably in social housing that would be covered by the local authorities—but victims of fires do not end up losing all their belongings and having no money with which to replace them? These are people on the edge who really are finding it hard to manage.
Robert Jenrick
I did look into that issue when the right hon. Lady raised it after the fire in Barking. I am acutely aware of the number of individuals who do not have household insurance—that was brought home to me after the floods in Doncaster last year, when we encountered many households that did not have it. I do not think that it is for the state to intervene—I am not sure how practical it would be for household insurance to be provided centrally, regardless of the value of the contents of individuals’ homes—but I am happy to think again, and to speak to the right hon. Lady if that would be helpful.
My Department continues to hold regular meetings with the crucial stakeholders, including Grenfell United, to discuss our emerging proposals, and to ensure that the reform we are introducing is what is needed to deliver meaningful change. I am grateful for their engagement and commitment. It was at their request that we did not rush to publish the social housing White Paper, but are continuing to work with them to ensure that they will—I hope—be able to support it in due course. I will report back to the House shortly with our conclusions.
We know that for the families, the relatives and the survivors, change cannot come quickly enough, and we know that there is still a huge amount to do. We have heard that already, in the opening of this debate. The recent fire in Barking and the fire in Bolton at the end of last year only serve to remind us of the urgency with which we must act, and will continue to guide our work.
Phase 1 of the inquiry was just the first part of a complex process to uncover the truth of what happened. Next week, phase 2 hearings will begin as the work of the inquiry continues. Those hearings will help us to understand how the building was so dangerously exposed to the risk of fire. I have no doubt that Sir Martin will leave no stone unturned in his work. There will be tough questions for those involved in the refurbishment of the tower, and for the manufacturers of the materials used; but there will also be questions for central and local government to respond to, and I will support the work of the inquiry in any way I can.
We also continue to work alongside others to bring about changes that will protect the public, and I will ensure that further updates on the steps taken to implement the chairman’s recommendations are shared with the House at the earliest opportunity.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
As has already been noted, a number of survivors and families from Grenfell are present today. They will be looking for leadership from both their local council and this place. Can the Secretary of State reassure us that he will continue to speak to all the people and organisations involved in the north Kensington area?
Robert Jenrick
I will certainly make that commitment to the bereaved, to the survivors, and to the community of north Kensington. I have met a number of those groups on a number of occasions since becoming Secretary of State, and last week my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I met a group of survivors, bereaved people, local residents and members of the community.
I think that I speak for the whole House in once again offering the bereaved and the survivors our most profound condolences. Their pain and loss were unimaginable to us. We owe it to them, and to all whose lives have been affected by the fire at Grenfell Tower, to match these sentiments with action, on a scale and at a pace commensurate with the tragedy, and to do everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again.
David Linden
Absolutely, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who was my predecessor in this role. When she covered the statement by the Secretary of State yesterday, that point was made. He has indicated that there will be meetings next month, with a view to reviewing this issue. I urge him and his Ministers, if a review is ongoing, to please take into account the representations that our constituents are making to us.
David Linden
I see the Secretary of State nodding. I hope that is him agreeing to a meeting with me and my colleagues, and that we can look at this issue before the guidance is rolled out in the coming months.
I am conscious that other colleagues wish to contribute to the debate, so I will conclude by thanking Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his team for their work thus far. I very much hope that we see rapid and thorough progress as we enter phase 2 of the inquiry in the coming days.