My Lords, I am proud to be here today to open this Second Reading debate of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill. This Bill will transform the lives of social housing tenants up and down the country. Once it is implemented, more tenants will live in decent, well looked-after homes, enjoying the quality of accommodation that they deserve.
However, it is right that we also reflect on the events that have led us to this point. Just over five years ago, 72 people—18 of them children—died as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire. The horrifying scenes that night ought never to have occurred. The situation in which the residents of Grenfell Tower were placed was unforgivable. The fire at Grenfell Tower exposed failures and decades of malpractice. It is vital that we bring about reform and lasting change so that a tragedy such as Grenfell never happens again.
Noble Lords have debated the Fire Safety Act and the Building Safety Act. The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill represents the next step in this programme of change. Social housing tenants, whether in Grenfell Tower or elsewhere up and down this country, have not been treated with the respect that they deserve. They do not always feel safe in their homes. Everyone should be treated with respect. Everyone has the right to feel safe in their home. In 2022, it is a disgrace that there are social housing tenants who are forced to live in damp, cold, unsafe homes. Some tenants wait months for repairs and are ignored by their landlords. We should be ashamed that this takes place. There are many good landlords in the sector. Many provide high-quality, well-managed, well-maintained accommodation. Many listen and care for their tenants, and many run a fiscally sound organisation. However, that cannot be said for every organisation. The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill will change this.
My Lords, I welcome the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, and look forward to hearing his maiden speech shortly.
Before that, Labour welcomes the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, which introduces long-overdue changes to the social housing regulation regime, five years on from the Grenfell Tower tragedy. However, we regret that what is essentially narrow and largely uncontroversial legislation has taken so long to materialise. Fire safety concerns raised by Grenfell residents had been ignored by their landlord. Residents complained of not being heard and of being treated with indifference. Therefore, we call from this side of the Chamber for higher standards for social tenants. We are extremely disappointed that the Bill does not go far enough in putting tenants at the heart of regulation and governance. The Grenfell tragedy shows that tenants can never again have so little power over their homes.
However, we must set the context in arriving at a judgment on the Bill. There are many social landlords who routinely fall well short on repairs and maintenance and could do far better. However, social landlords do not operate in a vacuum. Years of funding cuts to local authority budgets, as well as the four years during which a Conservative Government imposed a 1% social rent cut on them, have inevitably taken their toll, with the pandemic adding to the problems of housing revenue accounts.
Another major factor is the lack of affordable social housing, which has been exacerbated during 12 years of Tory rule. Successive Governments have not only singularly failed to build the social homes we need over that period but have overseen their loss on an unprecedented scale; 134,483 social homes for rent were either sold or demolished without direct replacement between 2010 and 2021. That is an average net loss of over 12,000 desperately needed, genuinely affordable homes a year.
My Lords, it is a great honour to make my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House today. I start with deep and sincere thanks to the many people who have helped me in the daunting journey of taking up my membership: Black Rod, the Clerk of the Parliaments and their offices; staff at the door of the Chamber and elsewhere; the Whips’ and the spads’ offices; and the many noble Lords on all sides of the House whose warmth, friendliness, encouragement and advice have made joining such a pleasure.
The first Viscount Camrose was my great-grandfather, who started as a journalist on the Merthyr Times—only 40 miles from Newport, I think. He built and grew a remarkable stable of newspapers, both regional and national, including, among many others, the Manchester Evening Chronicle, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph, which remained in family ownership until 1986. He became a baron in 1929 and a viscount in 1941.
Growing up surrounded by journalists, I concluded very early in life that I never wanted to become one but chose instead to go into management and consulting. As a result, I have had the great good fortune to live and work, as well as in London, in Redcar, in Birmingham, all over Europe, in a number of the great sprawling cities of west Africa, and in the United States. I have worked in international development, shipping, pharmaceuticals, oil and gas, financial services and manufacturing. Through these experiences, I have developed a strong interest in what makes people and the organisations they work for productive. Few of life’s experiences offer more satisfaction than a productive working day, and it has been and remains my purpose to provide as many of those to as many people as possible.
It is through that lens that I would like to comment on this Bill. Looking at it, as I would, as a management consultant, I suggest that we need to ask ourselves two questions. First, are the residents of social housing going to be made substantially safer and better accommodated by its provisions? Secondly, does it effectively balance the needs of providers of social housing and residents? As for the first point, I welcome the requirement on providers to appoint health and safety leads with the authority, capacity and resources to take responsibility for building safety. Few things get more in the way of risk management and incident preparedness than ambiguity—ambiguity over who is supposed to make decisions and who holds the budget to pay for the changes that those decisions require.
My Lords, it is a real pleasure to be the first to compliment my noble friend on his maiden speech. He has entered the Benches on this side of the House the hard way. He had to compete against a substantial number of well-qualified candidates who applied for the vacancy, whereas the rest of us, such as me, simply had to catch the eye of the Prime Minister of the day. I see with him in the House some of his recent fellow successful candidates, all regular attenders, in collective defiance of the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott.
My noble friend has built his career independently of the publishing tradition with which his family is associated, and, as we have heard, brings to your Lordships’ House a range of highly relevant abilities and interests, ranging from the oil and pharmaceutical industries to issues of governance and corporate management, and he has developed them in all parts of the globe. One of his particular concerns is that people and organisations cannot fulfil their full potential because they are not productive, particularly those who are out of work. The biggest problem facing this country today is poor productivity, and I look forward to his contributions to that debate. I also particularly welcome him to the ranks of those on this side of the House who take an interest in housing, and agree with what he said about the need to invest more in housing and social housing. I know the whole House will join me in welcoming my noble friend, and we look forward to his future contributions.
Turning to the Bill, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the meeting he arranged to discuss it, which was attended by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and me. The noble Lord’s travel arrangements have precluded him attending due to disruption on LNER. I can tell my noble friend that, as a result of that meeting with him, I will not be causing him the distress that I know I did during the passage of the then Building Safety Bill.
My Lords, I also begin by congratulating the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, on his excellent maiden speech. Clearly, he has a whole set of skills and experiences that will ensure that his contributions in this House will be highly valuable, as was apparent in his incisive and to the point speech, much of which I agree with and endorse.
Before I go any further, I declare my specific interest as the Church of England’s lead bishop for housing. Noble Lords will know that the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community has been actively working to envision how the Church, government and the nation might tackle the current housing crisis. Last year, the commission released its Coming Home report, which sets out in detail a reimagining of housing policy and practice centred on five core values, which are that housing should be
“sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying.”
Recently, the Church announced its intention to create a whole new national housing association, which will enable it to become a major provider of social housing. We are committed to doing our part to tackle the social housing shortage, and likewise to working with others to bring about this vision of truly good-quality housing across the nation.
Therefore, I welcome the Government’s introduction of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill. Many of its measures begin to address issues of transparency and accountability. The removal of the serious detriment test is much needed. As things stand, it is a major barrier to ensuring proactive engagement with tenants’ concerns. It is right to remove it in order to ensure that good living standards are upheld and maintained. The setting up of an advisory panel to amplify tenants’ voices is also very welcome. Too often the concerns of social housing tenants have been ignored or silenced. This must end.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in strong support of the Second Reading of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill. I declare my interest as set out in the register. I, too, congratulate my noble friend on a maiden speech of great distinction. It was truly excellent.
It is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and to agree with much of what has been said. So far this has been a debate of almost universal consensus, but I take issue with the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, with whom I am normally totally in agreement, and point out to her that many of these problems are of long standing and did not suddenly arise in 2010. Nevertheless, she made a great stump speech and I know the noble Baroness is very capable of that.
Any fair-minded person would say that it is high time that we responded to the Grenfell fire with this legislation. We do that here and I congratulate my noble friend on the legislation, which is totally appropriate. The proactive regulation regime being introduced and the refining of the regulatory position are desirable, as are the strengthening of enforcement powers and the toughening up of enforcement rules. That said, when my noble friend responds to the Second Reading, will he deal with some of the costs on the social housing regulator that may be increasing and seal off that issue? I am not sure whether the costs are considerable or not.
These regulations will govern 4 million households; that is significant. They will help give some closure to the people involved in the Grenfell fire. I was Minister in the department at the time and I remember the lasting horror of that as if it were yesterday—it has been quite a long while now. I think this will help give some sort of closure, as will decisions on prosecutions, although I recognise that this is well outside my noble friend’s control as a Minister. Not all government Ministers recognise that there is a division of powers but I know my noble friend does. I am conscious that, while no doubt progress is being made, it is somewhat slow.
My Lords, I add to the compliments to the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, on a most thoughtful and interesting speech. It was something to ponder on and I am sure that, in further contributions to the housing debates, it will be possible to expand on some of his thoughts and ideas. I am also delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, with whom I share a number of interests.
I am pleased today to welcome unreservedly the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, as others have. It is vital legislation, which will give residents a much more powerful voice when it comes to the homes in which they live. It is an important part of the response to the horrific events at Grenfell Tower five years ago. The Bill goes a long way to address constructively some of the key issues that matter most to residents and social housing providers, including quality of services, safety and performance.
I declare an interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, the trade body for England’s housing associations, a position I have held since 2015. During my tenure in this role, which draws to a close in September, I have been privileged to see first-hand the ways housing associations work tirelessly to deliver good-quality, secure housing for millions of people across the country. The important role that housing associations and social housing can play in every community was highlighted to me during the pandemic, when the sector galvanised at speed to keep residents safe, keep vital services operating and protect residents’ financial security by committing to a no-evictions pledge, which is still in place today.
Most strikingly, however, I have seen from what I regard as a brilliant sector a continued and unfailing commitment to learn and improve where services are not meeting residents’ expectations and needs—and that is exactly why the sector stands behind this legislation. Since the very start of the process of developing the social housing White Paper, from those early conversations with the then Housing Minister and tenants across the country following the Grenfell fire, the NHF and its members have been engaged and proactive in seeking change. There was a clear message from tenants that social housing providers were not always living up to the high standards that we rightly expect from that sector, with its long and proud history of housing people in need. We were not always listening to tenants’ views as closely as we could and should, or responding quickly enough to their concerns.
My Lords, I declare my interest as co-chair of Peers for the Planet, although I have to say I rather like the “commander-in-chief” designation given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. I am grateful to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne—very distinguished spear-carriers—for their anticipatory support.
As others have said, the Bill aims to offer renters of social housing a range of new regulatory standards and expectations, the need for which the tragedy of Grenfell and the inquiries that followed so clearly demonstrated. However, on one area of the regulator’s existing remit, that social housing should be of “appropriate quality”—that is, energy efficiency—the Bill is silent, yet the warmth and the heating costs of their homes is of crucial importance to tenants, particularly those who live in what the Minister described as damp, cold and unsafe homes. I shall therefore focus my brief comments on the importance of energy efficiency.
Back in November, even ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency reported that it considered energy efficiency to be the “first fuel”, as it still represents the cleanest and, in most cases, cheapest way to meet our energy needs. It also highlighted that there was no plausible pathway to net-zero emissions without using our energy resources much more efficiently. The strength of these arguments has been redoubled following the 54% increase in the energy price cap in April, with an expected further 65% increase in October and analysts saying say that this is going to go on until at least 2030.
However, progress appears to have stalled on energy efficiency, and this Bill does nothing to remedy that. In the Clean Growth Strategy in 2017, we heard of a planned consultation on how social housing can be upgraded to energy performance certificate, or EPC, band C by 2030 where practical, cost-effective and affordable. Four years later, in October 2021, in the heat and buildings strategy, a long-term regulatory standard to improve social housing was still being considered.
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This Bill is short but radical. The Regulator of Social Housing is responsible for landlords who register with it throughout England. The regulator will be taking a new, proactive approach to regulating social housing landlords on the issues that matter most to tenants: safety, so that tenants feel protected in their homes; transparency, so that tenants know what their landlord is doing to resolve their issues and can hold their landlord to account; quality accommodation and services, which we would expect landlords to provide; and complaint handling, so that tenants are listened to and their concerns are effectively addressed. The Bill will drive significant change in how social landlords behave, forcing them to focus on the needs of their tenants. Where they do not do this, they will be held robustly to account.
The Bill has three key parts. The first is a brand-new proactive consumer regime. This is the core of this legislation. The regulator will be empowered to hold landlords to account and to proactively ensure landlords are meeting the consumer standards we expect them to deliver. We are changing the regulator’s objectives. This will put tenant safety and transparency at the heart of everything the regulator does. We are removing the “serious detriment” test so that this is no longer a barrier to the regulator enforcing breaches of consumer standards. We are setting out the powers for the Housing Ombudsman to issue a complaint handling code to its members and to make orders to prevent problems recurring in future following complaints.
The Government are also taking a power to bring forward electrical safety regulations for social housing. We are consulting on mandatory electrical safety checks in the social rented sector, and this will align standards with the private rented sector. The new regime will also mean that the regulator will regularly inspect the largest landlords to ensure they are delivering quality homes and services to their tenants. Landlords will need to appoint a person with specific responsibility for health and safety. There will be a new access to information scheme. This will work similarly to the Freedom of Information Act for landlords not currently captured by that Act. Tenants of these landlords will, under the access to information scheme, have the right to request information from their landlord so they can effectively hold their landlord to account.
The second part of the Bill tweaks the current economic regulatory regime. The existing regime has been highly successful. The regulator has been effective at ensuring social housing landlords are fiscally well managed, and that tenants’ homes are not lost. However, we cannot rest on our laurels. The make-up of the sector is changing. New models for how landlords structure their organisations are popping up. We need to future-proof the current regime. We are tightening the definition of “non-profit” so that malign actors cannot play the system. We are forcing landlords to notify the regulator when they change their corporate form. We are introducing a look-through power so the regulator can follow money paid outside of the regulated sector, to ensure probity.
The third part of the Bill will give new powers for the regulator to take enforcement action when things go wrong. These powers will ensure the regulator can take robust action where landlords are failing to meet standards. There will be no limit on the amount the regulator can fine a landlord. Where a survey uncovers a serious issue with a property that a landlord has failed to fix, the regulator will be able to intervene and carry out repairs to fix the problem.
Noble Lords will wish to note that there will be a few targeted government amendments to this legislation in Committee. Among these, we are adding a provision that companies will be required to notify the regulator when there is a change in control of a housing association, as set out in the social housing White Paper. We are also adding a duty on the Housing Ombudsman to monitor compliance with its complaint handling code and a power for the ombudsman to recover any associated costs from its members.
The introduction of the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill to this House represents a decisive moment for tenants of social housing up and down this country. I beg to move.
Unfortunately, the Government’s headline proposals of rating your landlord and allowing a 250-person panel to meet three times a year with Ministers are not the powers residents need. The panel will exist only to scrutinise the measures being proposed in the legislation and will not be able to consider other pertinent issues, such as waiting lists, stigma, rent increases, allocation and housing supply. We need the Government instead to bring forward proper proposals to give tenants more power to take action in both social and private rented sectors. They should look towards the work of the last Labour Government, who introduced the decent homes standard, making available £22 billion of public investment in decent homes and improving the housing conditions of over 1.4 million council homes. By 2009, 86% of all council and housing association homes were brought up to a decent standard.
I reiterate that we support many of the measures in the Bill. However, given the scale of the problem that we know exists in regulating social housing, we want the Government to go further in key respects so that standards in social housing can markedly and rapidly improve and tenants’ complaints can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.
We have concerns about the ability of the Regulator of Social Housing to respond in practice to the volume of individual tenant complaints it is likely to receive and whether it will be inadequately resourced to perform its new role vis-à-vis inspections. We will therefore seek to amend the Bill to allow the regulator to retain the proceeds of any fines levied to help fund its work. We want to see the regulator given more teeth than the Bill currently proposes. We will seek to give it a range of wider powers, including the ability to order compensation for tenants.
Even with an enhanced role, armed with greater powers to regulate consumer standards in social housing, the regulator cannot be the sole redress for tenants. We will seek to have the Bill do more for tenants to enforce repairs themselves. We believe it does not go far enough on a national voice for tenants. At a minimum, the work of the residents’ panel could be shaped more directly by tenants themselves. We will seek to ensure that it can be—for example, by enabling its agenda and terms to be developed via tenant input.
An advisory panel with tenants represented on it will be established by the Bill, but to consider only
“information and advice to the regulator about, or on matters connected with, the regulator’s functions”.
This is not a new idea. In the aftermath of Grenfell, the Government and tenants drew up plans to set up A Voice for Tenants, a national tenant group to work with government on issues affecting those in social housing. To the frustration of tenant bodies involved, it never progressed.
Another possible issue is that the Regulator of Social Housing relies on registered providers to let their tenants know of ways to complain, which means that the worst providers are likely to be the ones to inform their tenants of their rights, and therefore potentially reduce complaints. The White Paper committed to routine inspections only for the largest registered providers—those of more than 1,000 homes—every four years.
Beyond this, there is nothing in the Bill on how tenant voice and engagement will work in practice at the local level. It would allow, but not force, the regulator to set standards relating to the information landlords provide to tenants. Examples are mentioned in the draft regulations.
Safety is the greatest of concerns. The Bill would add generic safety to the regulator’s fundamental objectives. This means that the regulator can now set a standard on safety and enforce against it. The Bill further introduces a new requirement for social landlords to appoint a named individual responsible for health and safety. A separate regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, will also regulate all buildings’ safety when the new regime comes into force.
Currently, fines for non-compliance are capped at £5,000. The Bill proposes giving the regulator the power to issue unlimited fines. Larger fines could be a crucial deterrent to bad practice, enforcing the law against poorly performing landlords and disincentivising the poor treatment of tenants, but questions remain about what the fines would mean in practice, particularly in terms of housing associations passing the cost back to tenants.
The Bill also proposes enabling the regulator to enter and inspect properties with only 48 hours’ notice, down from 28 days, which is a significant change. However, short notice inspections need to be carefully thought through. Finally, the Bill proposes enabling the regulator to make emergency repairs where there is a serious risk. The White Paper stated that the Government were
“determined to increase the supply of new and beautiful social homes”,
yet the Bill is silent on the issues of supply.
I leave my final comments to echo those of David Renard, the Conservative leader of Swindon Borough Council and housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association:
“As well as improving existing homes, the social housing supply is not sufficient to meeting the current housing demand, which is why we want to see long-term plans to give councils powers to build 100,000 high-quality, climate-friendly social homes a year, including reform of the Right to Buy scheme, which has made it difficult for councils to build replacement homes at the rate at which they are sold.”
I am sure that we all recall with horror many different details of the Grenfell disaster, but one that sticks in my mind is the fire extinguishers that had been marked down for decommissioning by one team but were never actually decommissioned because it was not clear who was supposed to be doing so. That is why it is so valuable to make a single properly resourced person accountable for all safety decisions.
As to my second question on balancing the needs of social housing providers and residents, I am encouraged by the primacy of the tenant in these new regulatory arrangements. Although, of course, the priority is to offer safe homes of good quality to residents, we have to make sure that providers are willing to enter the market and compete. On this basis, I welcome the primacy of the tenant in the Bill, because it aligns the interests of all three parties: the tenant, provider and regulator. To satisfy the tenant is to satisfy the regulator, and I welcome the clarity of this direction.
If the Bill has been a long time in coming, that time has clearly been spent in taking considerable pains to design, through the Green Paper, call for evidence and White Paper, what we can all hope will have a transformational effect on the social housing sector.
Finally, it is worth reminding ourselves of the context for benefit-dependent tenants: the tightening public purse; a continuing dearth of affordable housing, worsened by the rise of Generation Rent; and, of course, the uncertainties of inflation. In these highly pressured circumstances, we need more homes and more providers to enter the market. I suggest that a stable, balanced regulatory environment for social housing will go some way to encouraging them to do so.
I have three issues that I want to raise with my noble friend. The first concerns Clause 2 and the advisory panel. The Bill provides for a statutory advisory panel. I welcome the idea, but why does it have to be statutory if its role is simply to give advice? The Housing Ombudsman also has a panel of advisers created in 2018, but that is not statutory and seems to work perfectly well. There are many other instances of panels and advisory boards dotted around Whitehall which are informal. Making this one statutory could raise costs, make it subject to judicial review, make it less flexible and will require primary legislation if it were to be abolished. Is this a bit of gold-plating that we do not really need?
How does this panel relate to the one that was set up a year ago? In August last year, Minister Eddie Hughes announced a new expert panel to advise the Government on the delivery of the social housing White Paper. That was non-statutory, with 14 members to deliver on the reforms. Are these the same people who will form the panel in Clause 2, whose objectives seem to be exactly the same as the expert panel, or are we to have two panels with similar objectives, one statutory and one non-statutory? Perhaps my noble friend can shed some light on this.
My second issue concerns the relationship between the two bodies to whom social tenants can now complain. A social housing tenant can complain to the Housing Ombudsman, and now to the Regulator of Social Housing. I am all in favour of avenues through which tenants can seek redress, but there must be some risk of duplication here. It is clear from the Bill that the Regulator of Social Housing can have a direct line of communication with tenants. The social housing White Paper expects:
“The Regulator of Social Housing to undertake specific, reactive investigations and/or inspections where appropriate. This could be when a serious potential compliance breach has been brought to its attention by tenants”.
The briefing notes that accompanied the Queen’s Speech also referred to the powers of the regulator to arrange emergency repairs to tenants’ homes following a survey, and to a guarantee that the regulator will be able to act more quickly where it has concerns about the decency of a home. Therefore, the regulator also has the means to rectify complaints itself, as contained in Clause 24.
These are not powers that the Housing Ombudsman has—his role is to resolve disputes. He can make awards and recommendations, but he cannot, for instance, enter premises to remedy specific failures. If I was a tenant, and particularly if there is a backlog of complaints to the Housing Ombudsman, I would head for the Regulator of Social Housing, since he has more powers. However, there is a further overlap where there is scope for confusion. The Housing Ombudsman does not just resolve complaints: he has broader objectives that seem to trespass on the territory of the regulator. For example, the Housing Ombudsman uses insight and data to identify trends in complaint types and carries out thematic investigations into issues affecting the sector, producing regular “spotlight reports”. He investigates systemic issues relating to individual landlords. He can share expertise, insight, experience and learning to influence the sector to drive a positive complaint-handling structure. These objectives are emphasised in the corporate plan for 2022-25.
However, those powers of the Housing Ombudsman are very similar to the powers given to the regulator in Clauses 17 and 21, and to the objectives set out by the Minister. Paragraph 1 of the Explanatory Notes tells us that:
“The intent of this Bill is to reform the regulatory regime to drive significant change in landlord behaviour to focus on the needs of their tenants and ensure landlords are held to account for their performance.”
However, that is just a shortened version of what I have just read out about the ombudsman.
This brings us to Clause 4. The Explanatory Notes refer in more diplomatic terms to the potential conflict I have just referred to:
“The regulator and the housing ombudsman both have a role in overseeing the performance of social housing landlords”.
But that is the problem. They then refer to the memorandum of understanding between the two. Officials kindly sent it to me, but it does not deal adequately with this overlap. It should be rewritten, with greater clarity about who does what, and to avoid duplication. It is not enough to say, as it does at the moment, that they should
“seek to promote understanding about their respective roles.”
I hope my noble friend can reassure me that this overlap will be addressed.
Finally, I turn to issues which will be raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. She is commander-in-chief of Peers for the Planet and I am a humble spear-carrier, but there is a need to increase energy efficiency in the social housing stock if we are to achieve our climate change objectives. Although the Government set the objective of improving the efficiency of homes, no commitment has yet been made on social housing. Their Heat and Buildings Strategystates:
“We will also consider setting a long-term regulatory standard to improve social housing to EPC band C, with levers required to decarbonise the stock in line with Net Zero”,
but no consultation has yet been launched. The Committee on Climate Change recommended that all properties should reach EPC C by 2028.
Related to this, I refer the Minister to Clause 18, which enables the regulator to issue a code of practice on consumer standards. Will energy efficiency be included in this code, against the background of what I just said?
With those remarks, I end by assuring my noble friend that I welcome the Bill and hope it reaches the statute book soon.
The tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire demonstrates the urgent need for safety to be a central objective. We must all do everything we can to ensure this dreadful tragedy is not repeated. As the Bishop of Kensington, the right reverend Dr Graham Tomlin, said at the recent five-year memorial service,
“what happened at Grenfell was wrong. It was not an unfortunate accident—it was the result of careless decisions taken, regulations ignored, an industry that seemed at times more interested in making profits and selling products than in the precious value of human life and keeping people safe in their own homes.”
I am sure noble Lords will join me in strong praise of the work done by the Bishop of Kensington and the incredible Grenfell community to bring about a safer future for social housing in their community and across the nation.
Therefore, it is only right and appropriate that the Government have now made safety one of the regulator’s fundamental objectives in the Bill. I urge the Government to also consider adding as fundamental objectives the other core values of sustainability, stability, sociability and satisfaction. These can work in complementarity to ensure truly good housing for all.
What plans do the Government have to increase the amount of good-quality social housing stock in the nation that meets these objectives? Recent decades have seen a drastic drop in available social housing. According to Shelter, since 1991 there has been an average annual net loss of 21,000 social homes and more than 1.2 million households are currently waiting for social homes. Millions have been pushed into the private rented sector, often resulting in unstable and unacceptable circumstances of overcrowding or temporary accommodation. We must work together to address this shortage of supply. In doing so, it is essential that we ensure that this is truly affordable housing. Current definitions of affordability fall short. What is classed as affordable should reflect residents’ ability to pay rather than local market rates. Simply building more homes without consideration of their affordability will not solve the housing crisis.
I understand the impetus to fine social housing landlords, but I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify how this will work effectively, given that such fines are likely to take resources from the housing association, thereby potentially reducing its ability to provide services, improvements, tenancy and neighbourhood support, a point touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox.
Finally, in addressing the housing crisis, I urge the Government to consider one more essential element set out in the Coming Home report: sacrifice. At present, the cost of the housing crisis falls largely on those who are financially poorest and resident in unaffordable or substandard housing. This is starkly evident at the moment as the cost of living crisis bites as well. The housing crisis will not be solved unless there is a willingness among others in the housing market to share this burden: that means landlords, developers, landowners, homeowners and government. These sacrifices will help ensure a lasting housing legacy that works for us all. A long-term, cross-party housing strategy that brings those at every level of government, together with landowners, developers, landlords, homeowners and faith organisations, is the only way that sustainable and meaningful transformation will happen.
I am very pleased that there is something specific on electrical safety checks in the legislation that we will be considering. Members will recall that, although the cladding obviously made a massive contribution to the spread of the fire, in legal terms it was caused by an electrical fault. I pay tribute here to the work of Electrical Safety First, an excellent organisation led by Lesley Rudd, Ron Bailey and others, which does first-class work in this area and has been focusing attention on the need to extend electrical safety checks from the private sector to include the social sector. The Bill will do just that. I hope that the consultation going on in parallel with this will be comprehensive and will look at all checks of installations of appliances so that we can deal with an all too common cause of housing fires in our country. Again, that will be a welcome development if, again, somewhat late.
I join my noble friend Lord Young in asking about the relationship between the housing ombudsman and the regulator; I am not clear in my own mind how that would work and would be grateful for any clarity. I also join him as another spear carrier behind the chariot of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, as it proceeds in the fight on climate change and related issues, in this case particularly including energy efficiency. We will be looking at that keenly as the legislation progresses. Nevertheless, we should all give a warm welcome to this legislation; no doubt we will seek to improve it as it goes through Committee and Report.
While it may not always have been easy to listen to such criticisms, the sector is now unflinching in recognising where improvements could be made and is always committed to getting things right. In fact, the sector stepped forward without legislation or government policy decisions to develop, along with residents, Together with Tenants, a sector-wide initiative focused on strengthening the relationship between residents and housing association landlords. Based on a four-point plan and charter, the programme has been delivering tangible changes in accountability, transparency and governance across housing associations since its launch in 2019. To date, 207 housing associations are signed up to the programme, covering 83% of all housing association homes. The NHF was pleased to see Together with Tenants referenced in the White Paper. I am confident that the programme has laid excellent foundations on which the regulations brought forward by the Bill can stand securely.
Furthermore, in the last three weeks the sector has taken a huge step forward in tackling issues of poor-quality housing. Earlier this month it was announced that the National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing have worked together to set up an independent panel to make swift recommendations to tackle issues of poor-quality housing in the sector. We have seen from reports on ITV News and campaigns on social media that some residents have been badly let down by unacceptable problems with housing quality and poor customer service. The work of the new panel, chaired by Helen Baker, the chair of Shelter and an expert in housing, social care, health and education, will guide housing associations to tackle these problems head-on.
I am proud to say that the NHF and its members embrace a culture of transparency and openness when it comes to performance in dealing with issues that matter to residents, and we want that to be clear, meaningful and inclusive. We are at a critical point for improving many residents’ experience of social housing, and housing associations stand ready to deliver this change.
As I welcome the Bill, I hope the Minister will join me in welcoming the work that housing associations are already doing to drive up standards. Will he commit to continuing to engage closely with housing associations on what I believe to be vital reforms?
This Bill is intended to facilitate a new, proactive approach to regulating social housing on consumer issues such as safety, transparency and tenant engagement, about which we have heard in this debate. The cost of keeping warm is a key consumer issue, and yet tenants of social housing are still waiting for that regulatory standard. Welcome as the drip-feed of funding for selected improvements has been, along with the Government’s promises to learn from schemes that have failed in the past, 35% of social housing remains rated EPC D or below. Increased support for energy efficiency measures would address all three points of what has been called the “energy trilemma”.
On the first issue, affordability, the Building Back Britain Commission, made up of chief executives from some of the UK’s biggest housing groups, has argued that £200 a year could be saved just by improving a home’s energy performance certificate rating of D to C. That sum is equivalent to the originally announced energy bill discount—but every year, rather than a one-off. The CBI has made similar points, with Tony Danker asking whether we want a new normal of energy efficiency, or of billion-pound bailouts every quarter. The Committee on Climate Change has also shown how the capital investment needed to get to net-zero building will more than pay for itself through savings on fuel, healthcare and other costs.
On sustainability, domestic heating accounts for 21% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. The vast majority of homes still rely on natural gas for heating, meaning that every kilowatt hour of energy saved will help us to meet our commitments under the Paris Agreement and our domestic legally binding net-zero target. Regarding homes heated by electricity, it will help by lowering demand in the coldest months of the year, when our museum-piece coal-fired power stations are most often brought out of retirement for additional capacity.
On security of supply and cost, the same considerations apply. Every unit of energy saved will help us to reduce our dependence on imported gas and, indeed, on North Sea oil and gas, which is in any case traded on the global market and priced accordingly.
There is in fact a fourth point: the impact on employment opportunities and levelling up. The Construction Industry Training Board has estimated that net-zero homes will create more than 200,000 new jobs, and energy efficiency retrofits in particular are expected to provide new jobs as an important part of the green recovery. The building back greener commission has also shown that the homes which stand to gain most from government intervention are in areas designated as needing levelling up.
When will the long-term regulatory standard for social housing be brought forward? Will the Government commit to the same trajectory for social housing as they set out for private renters in the heat and buildings strategy? Of course, addressing energy efficiency in social housing is only one part of a necessary wider national strategy to reduce energy demand, but the Government are even further behind on their commitments on social housing compared to other housing types. This Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to put their outstanding public commitments on a statutory footing, setting out a detailed trajectory for meeting them. I look forward to hearing from the Minister a clear plan and timetable for doing so.