Local Housing Allowance: Nottingham — House of Commons, 2019-06-17
Topic: Housing
Lilian Rachel Greenwood (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman pre-empts much of my speech, but he is entirely right. Today’s debate was prompted by research undertaken by Hannah Clemson, policy and communications officer at Advice Nottingham, into the availability and affordability of private rented accommodation in Nottingham city, specifically property within the local housing allowance rate. Advice Nottingham is a consortium of six advice agencies based in Nottingham and providing free, confidential and impartial advice on a range of issues, including benefit, debt, employment and housing. They do an incredible job supporting people who are often in desperate circumstances, and I am glad to have the opportunity to put on the record my thanks to them for the work they do The availability of affordable homes to rent is clearly an issue of importance to many of my constituents in Nottingham, but it is not only an issue in our city. This debate is particularly timely, given last Thursday’s urgent question on the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Samuels v. Birmingham City Council led by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova). That case highlighted the impact of the growing gap between actual rents and the amount of rent covered by local housing allowance, following the Government’s decision to freeze LHA rates from April 2016 Analysis by Shelter has revealed that there is now a shortfall between LHA rents at the 30th percentile in 97% of broad market rental areas in England. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, people cannot find affordable rents, and that is true almost everywhere in this country. Nottingham is one such area, where the freeze on local housing allowance is leaving people homeless and in poverty. Many of my constituents simply cannot afford a home in the private rented sector, yet that is the only choice they have. The Government’s outdated LHA rates from 2016 show rents in Nottingham to be as low as £42.54 per week. In reality, Advice Nottingham has found the cheapest property is now at least £63 per week Advice Nottingham knew that LHA was not meeting local needs from the work it did with its clients. It knew that rents were too high and that local people were struggling to find affordable accommodation, but it decided to do its own research to find out exactly how many properties were available in the city within the LHA rates. It undertook this research last November within a one-week period. Using Rightmove, Zoopla and Gumtree, it searched the city to find properties. It found only 12 properties at or below the rate for shared accommodation, and many of those were specifically marketed as student properties—I will explain the significance of that later in my speech. It found just five one-bedroom flats in the city at or below the LHA rate. Family homes proved even harder to find: there were only two two-bedroom properties at or below LHA rate; three three-bedroom properties; and one four-bedroom house, in the whole of the city, at a rent covered by LHA More recent work by Nottingham City Council confirms Advice Nottingham’s findings. The LHA rate is intended to reflect the bottom 30th percentile of local rents, but it found that it actually covered less than 7% of one-bedroom flats, less than 3% of two-bedroom properties and less than 5% of three-bedroom homes. With a shortage of council or housing association properties available, many families are forced to rent properties that they cannot really afford, forgoing other essential household expenditure, including food, heating and clothing, simply to put a roof over their heads.