Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-14
Topic: Housing
Richard Best (Crossbench, Unknown): Noble Lords will be glad to hear that I am not going to enter a debate on land value taxation. I speak to Amendments 82C and 82D. I am also going to say something about Amendment 82F in my name and in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Stoneham It is important to note that this provision relates only to future tenancies. That makes it so much better than the pay-to-stay arrangements which cover everybody who is already a tenant and may feel a sense of insecurity as a result. Existing tenants are not affected by this. That means the 4.4 million tenants in social housing should not worry so much about it. The amendment seeks to extend the minimum period of a tenancy from two years to five years and the maximum period from five years to ten years under these arrangements My amendment is not a very good one, I have to confess. I do not think it is terribly helpful. It would be better to stay with the Localism Act 2011 which the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, has explained to us. This gave local authorities the power to have short-term tenancies, but most local authorities of all political persuasions have decided that they do not want to go along with this. It is not very helpful. That is fine. They have that power available to them. I think we should probably leave things as they are It does not seem helpful, certainly, to the people who live there to be told that there is a mandatory limit on the time that they can stay before a rather nebulous review takes place. The housing associations have the opportunity to have shorter-term lettings of this kind. They also do not make much use of this. I have been chief executive of a housing association. I do not think we ever bothered with fixed terms of this kind. We wanted people to have a home to move in, settle down and stay. That was a service in its own right, getting people who had often had rather insecure lives the security to put down roots, send the kids to school and all the rest of it It is also, perhaps slightly surprisingly, the case that the new-look private landlords are the build-to-rent developers who are now building blocks of flats using insurance-company money, pension-fund money, who are coming into this business. They are interested in longer leases than the traditional six-month or 12-month shorthold tenancies. They see the sense of people staying Some noble Lords may have visited the build-to-let properties being built at Olympic Village. There are four-year leases, and people are talking about seven-year leases. It is a marketing ploy for them. It distinguishes them from the old-look private landlords. I think, therefore, that the tendency is to try to give people greater security of tenure, time to settle into places Amendment 82F is a little more specialist, but it seems important. As I read the schedule to the Bill, this part of the schedule says that the old-style secure tenancies will continue. If somebody moves because the council has required them to move—fair enough, the estate is being demolished or the tenant is being decanted temporarily. They move out but they do not lose their security of tenure. That is fine, but what the schedule says at the moment is that, if you apply to move, if it is your choice to move—perhaps it is an exchange with another tenant or a transfer to a new home—then you would lose your long-term security. This means that you would be ill advised to do so. If I was advising that tenant, I would say, "That is probably not a good idea, to lose your security of tenure". This goes against the idea that we are extremely interested in stopping under-occupancy in this country. People will be moving very often to downsize, making way for other people who can move in, who may be overcrowded elsewhere. We want people to move and make best use of social housing. We do not want them to be frightened of doing that. It might be the mother fleeing violence—it is her decision; she wants to move elsewhere. It might be the overcrowded family getting the chance to move to somewhere bigger—they do not want to lose the security that they have at the moment. The amendment would delete that requirement. The Minister might explain to me that I am interpreting the provision inaccurately and that we have nothing to fear, but it looks as if the schedule, by removing security of tenure for people who transfer of their own volition, would be a bad move There does not seem to be any need for this, other than a kind of inbuilt feeling that people should feel a little bit insecure about their lives, which I do not feel is what those in the world of providing social housing want to happen. I would leave the Localism Act as it stands.