No one in Britain today should face the cold and indignity of having to sleep in a doorway, so the Minister for Homelessness and Democracy, my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), has today announced the tripling of the rough sleeping winter pressures fund. This will ensure that as many people as possible have access to a safe roof over their head and a warm bed to sleep in.
Safety experts have raised concerns about 95 high-rise blocks and nearly 300 other buildings in Scotland found to contain high pressure laminate panels. Shockingly, eight years on from Grenfell the Scottish Government have spent less than 10% of the £97 million received from the UK Government for dealing with cladding in 2020. Does the Minister agree that the Scottish Government have dragged their feet on this for far too long and must act now to make these buildings safe?
I agree that remediation has been too slow. This Government are laser-focused on speeding up the remediation of dangerous buildings, and I encourage the Scottish Government, for which this is a devolved matter, to increase their efforts, as we are, to up the pace of remediation in Scotland.
Great. Why, then, is it that the Secretary of State, the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have all intervened in the planning application for the Chinese super-embassy, overriding the wishes and concerns of local residents, the local planning authority, the Metropolitan police, the security services and, most likely, the incoming US President?
T2. Constituents of mine in High Green were told that a social housing repair project for their home would take 12 weeks. The project has now been ongoing for 64 weeks, with contractors leaving the works in a disgraceful condition. I welcome the Government’s boost to the building of more social housing and the extra £350,000 of homelessness funding announced for Sheffield this week. How does the Minister plan to empower local authorities to ensure that contractors deliver social house building and repairs to a high standard and on time?
All social housing tenants deserve to live in decent homes, to be treated with fairness and respect and to have their problems quickly resolved. Under the Regulator of Social Housing’s safety and quality standard, housing associations and councils must provide an effective, efficient and timely repair service for their homes, including setting timetables for completion and clearly communicating with residents. As my hon. Friend knows, we will also introduce Awaab’s law and a new decent homes standard to set the minimum quality that social homes must meet.
Recently, a 1-acre site in Corfe Mullen in my constituency was sold. It was a house surrounded by lots of beautiful gardens, and I think the House can see where this is going. The neighbours raised the alarm that the trees were going to be taken down. They flagged it with the council, which did not see a problem, and a week later, in the dead of night, the developers brought chainsaws and destroyed every bit of nature on the site. Will the Minister commit to bringing forward legislation to auto-protect trees above a particular size or age in their planning reforms, so that developers do not get away with environmental vandalism?
Protections are already in place, but if the hon. Lady wishes to write to me with further details of that particular case, on which I do not have the full information to allow me to comment now, I will endeavour to look into the matter more carefully and to provide her with a full response.
T3. More than 600 households across Luton are living in temporary accommodation, with families scattered across hotels and bed and breakfasts waiting for homes to become available. The previous Government’s inaction on housing has made that painful wait even longer. It takes nearly a decade for a four-bedroom property to become available in Luton. Can the Secretary of State outline what steps she is taking to shorten waiting times and increase social housing stock for people in Luton North?
The Secretary of State is leading the charge in building 1.5 million homes to tackle the supply challenge that we face as a country, because of the housing crisis we inherited. We also announced £500 million for the affordable homes programme in the Budget and funding for homelessness services has gone up by £233 million, bringing the total to a billion pounds. I am pleased to say that Luton will receive more than £6.3 million. Furthermore, we are investing £210,000 in the emergency accommodation reduction pilot.
T4. Following the Grenfell tragedy, the residents of Northpoint in my constituency have had to pay charges of nearly £700,000 for a waking watch, fire wardens and alarms. Given the Government’s manifesto commitment to better protect leaseholders from costs, what steps can the Minister take to help my constituents with the reimbursement of those charges?
Sadly, I hear these stories across the country as well. The reality is that the best step that can be taken is for the developer to enter into the cladding safety scheme, to get the building remediated and to get the costs removed. In the meantime, we have made money available through the waking watch replacement fund, so that that particularly expensive way of keeping a building safe can be replaced. There are ways of tackling the pain in the short term, but the reality is that the only solution is the remediation of buildings, and that is why we are pushing on so hard through our remediation acceleration plan.