argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Catherine Bakewell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support my noble friend’s comments and agree with everything that she has said. I shall speak specifically to Amendment 7, which is in this group and is a probing amendment Banning orders are a very important element of the Bill. They are not undertaken lightly and involve a great deal of research and work on the part of the local authorities. It takes many months of gathering information from tenants and consulting with related agencies operating in the sector, such as Citizens Advice, food banks, social services and local housing associations, to build up a picture around a person who they are investigating with a view to considering a banning order. Local authorities’ budgets are extremely stretched, as we know, and while it is to everyone’s advantage that they undertake this work in order to achieve a successful outcome when they apply for a planning order, it seems not unreasonable that they should receive the fine as recompense for the work undertaken. This will be especially important when it is highly likely that the local authority will be expected to house those previous tenants of the landlord subject to the banning order, as my noble friend has indicated There is an undertaking that local government will not be expected to take on new burdens that are not listed in the new burdens doctrine, with the expectation that the Chancellor will have had regard to this requirement when making the local government settlement. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that this is the case. Might she also be able to find a way forward to recompense local authorities in some way for this additional work, which is desperately needed by private sector tenants?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Monroe Edward Palmer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support Amendments 2 and 7, and draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the register of interests as a director of the Property Redress Scheme, one of the government recognised organisations Amendment 2, in the name of my noble friend Lady Grender, draws attention to the fact that this House and the other place do not consider legislation in a holistic fashion. We seem to consider one amendment to one piece of legislation without looking at the unintended consequences of that legislation, as identified by Amendment 2. Yes, we should address rogue landlords, however one describes them, but that will have an effect on the tenants of the relevant properties. The tenant who makes a complaint will have some protection in terms of getting rehoused, but the property may contain a number of tenants, including those who have not made a complaint against the landlord who is banned. If the property is no longer available for letting, those tenants will become homeless. My noble friend drew attention to the transfer of the relevant property to other people who are not specified in the Bill. What then happens to the tenants? We do not know that because we are not adopting a holistic approach to the legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said that we do not have consolidation Bills. We have unintentional effects because of that Amendment 7 was spoken to by my noble friend Lady Bakewell. The problem is that we pass legislation without considering sanctions. The sanctions are to be imposed by local authorities, which are having their grants reduced and are looking for ways not to spend money rather than to spend it. Amendment 7 proposes that local authorities which are proactive in implementing the legislation should retain the relevant financial penalty. When the Minister replies, will she say whether the Government have had discussions with trading standards departments, environmental health departments and housing departments on how they will implement this part of the legislation to ban rogue landlords? I know of only one London borough—Camden—that has a really active trading standards officer dealing with housing, but the rest do not have the finance to cover this area. Therefore, I hope that some research has been carried out with local authorities in England to determine whether these restrictions will bite where they need to.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, the amendments put forward give rise to a very simple, brutal question—I speak as somebody who is wrestling with trying to produce a council budget at the moment, in very difficult circumstances—and that is: how much is this going to cost local authorities? I have looked at the impact assessment, and basically it talks about the cost to the private housing sector—to the providers of private-landlord accommodation. Unless I have completely missed it, I cannot find any assessment of the cost to the local authorities, who will have the responsibility of doing all this. My first question is: have the Government made an assessment of this and, if so, will they tell us what it is The second thing I have been trying to apply my mind to is, in my own authority, how we will deal with this. The point about local authorities, of course, is that they are very different: there are large unitary counties, there are large metropolitan and other unitary urban authorities, and there are small districts. It is the housing authorities as a whole which will have to deal with this, including the small districts. The way the small districts may be able to cope is perhaps very different to that of a large authority that employs a lot more specialist staff, such as solicitors and property management people. I have, therefore, been trying to get my mind round how local authorities will actually make the decisions about applying to the tribunal for a banning order—who will make those decisions, how it will be done, how much it will cost, how much work will go into it—and dealing with appeals, because it is quite clear that there will be a lot of appeals, assuming that a lot of people go through the banning process Then there is the second decision. Apart from the people who have gone through the tribunal and automatically go on the database, there is a decision about whether to put the other people who have been convicted of banning offences on the database. How much time and resource will that decision take? Again, there is the question of appeals, which are never cheap for local authorities, and then there is the cost of maintaining the database itself: whether or not that is onerous depends on how many people there are on the database. My second question is really linked to how much the Government think this is going to cost local authorities—any answer to that must be based on an idea of how many cases there are going to be over the period of a year, or whatever it might be. Do the Government have any answer at all to those questions?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I have an amendment later on that refers to empty dwelling management orders, which do not work very well at the moment. If a local authority is managing a property because the owner of that property has a banning order, is it assumed that the only money the local authority can spend on the property, which may be severely substandard—that may be why the banning order is there, or may be related to it—is the money taken in rents, even if it is not sufficient to bring it up to standard? If so, do we accept that a local authority is managing a substandard property for a period of time and if not, where will the local authority get the money to put into that property?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Donald Foster (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I wonder if the Minister can help me because I am now slightly confused. If the local authority is expected to use funds upfront to make repairs and bring a property up to suitable standards, and the only way it can recoup them is through a charge—whether a first or a second charge—is it not the case that that money can be realised to the council only when the property is sold, which may be a considerable time after the local authority has incurred the costs?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way when I was not asking her to. This is a new convention which perhaps we should adopt. I think the point that my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath was making is that it might be a very long time before the property is sold by the owner. It could be 50 years, by which time who knows whether local authorities will still exist? There appears to be no means by which the local authority is guaranteed to get its money back within the period of the banning order.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Other
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I am trying to be helpful to the Minister. It would be extremely helpful if she could write to us all with some examples and figures showing how this might work in practice, both in terms of the procedure and some numbers, so that we can understand it—which we are not going to this afternoon, clearly.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Monroe Edward Palmer (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): In terms of the charges on the property, I seek some clarification. We are told that the local authority may have taken over management of the property and be taking a charge on it, and will be able to underwrite its costs in one way or another, which seems very sensible. The problem is if there is an existing charge on the property because the owner has a mortgage on it. To seek recompense and take action, the local authority will have to take cognisance of the fact that there is already a charge on that property. A local authority may be very reluctant to incur the cost when it knows it is in a queue and may get nothing whatever at the end of the line.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Rosalind Grender (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this discussion and the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, for his support for continuing to examine this area. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, who raised property transfer and the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Greaves, for commenting on where the resource goes, about which we have already had much discussion. The Minister said that we would find some answers and reassurance for tenants in Schedule 3. We will continue to scrutinise this issue to make sure that there is absolutely no threat of a tenant being made homeless as a result of the activities of a dreadful rogue landlord. That is the main aim of this amendment and we will continue to review that as the Bill progresses. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Graham Norman Tope (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, my noble friend Lady Bakewell spoke to these amendments fully and explained them very well, and we all wait with interest to hear the Minister’s response. We should recognise how important the issues that they raise are. My name does not happen to appear on Amendment 9—I am not quite sure why—but I certainly support it. We do need some sort of indication—I think 28 days is entirely right and appropriate—of how soon an appeal on matters that are so important and sensitive for both the tenant and the landlord will be heard. We are only too aware of other types of appeal that wait not just for months but for years. For an appeal to be heard within 28 days seems to me entirely reasonable The other amendments deal with another important point: exactly who will have access to the information in the database? Surely it must be right for the tenants to have a right of access to that information. Whether it is appropriate to put that in the Bill or in the draft regulations we wait to hear—but we have heard enough about the regulations already while debating this Bill, and we think that it should be on the face of the Bill. I hope that when the Minister replies she will, at the very least, agree with the point being made here. We can then argue about where the provision is to be placed. We look forward to the Minister’s reply; I hope it will be a positive one, recognising the importance of these issues.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Catherine Bakewell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for mentioning the anonymising of tenants’ names on the list. It is very important that their names should not be released I cannot pretend that I am anything other than disappointed with the Minister’s response. It is very important that the appeals are heard in a timely manner and I think 28 days is a reasonable time in which to hear an appeal. In other parts of the Bill we shall come to issues of abandonment, where there are very definite timescales that people must abide by. So I find it somewhat strange that we cannot have a timescale for hearing the appeals. This may be something we wish to return to on Report With regard to the list of landlords being anonymised and not released to tenants, I cannot see the point of holding a list if it is be anonymised. That seems somewhat perverse. Tenants should have access to the list and should be able to see whether their landlord is on the database. I accept that rogue landlords will be on the database when they may not have a banning order. I understand that difference but, nevertheless, these are not the kinds of landlords we wish to promote. The Minister has indicated that she does not wish to drive rogue landlords out of business, but what of the good landlords? There are hundreds and thousands of responsible landlords operating their properties for the benefit of their tenants and just one or two rogue landlords are in danger of giving other landlords a very bad name. We should be able to name and shame these rogue landlords However, I understand the Minister’s view. It is possible that we may return to this but I will withdraw my amendment.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Donald Foster (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, we are being asked in this amendment whether we think there is a need for further protection for tenants in the private rented sector. I suspect that I can guess the Minister’s response, although I hope I will be proved wrong. The Minister will point out that there is already a large amount of legislation to protect us from—I hesitate to use the phrase—"rogue landlords" and that further strengthening of that is to come, and that there is protection as regards retaliatory eviction against people who run "beds in sheds". The Government’s own website lists a large number of tenants’ rights, which include the rights to, "live in a property that’s safe and in a good state of repair", to have your deposit protected, to, "challenge excessively high charges, know who your landlord is, live in the property undisturbed, see an Energy Performance Certificate … be protected from unfair eviction and unfair rent", and to have a written agreement if the tenancy term is fixed for more than three years. The Minister will no doubt point out, rightly, that some councils already have an accreditation scheme; she will point to the excellent Private Rented Sector Code of Practice that was developed on behalf of the Government by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors back in 2014. She may talk about the trade bodies that many residential landlords associations have, and as a fallback she will also of course refer, rightly, to the county court mediation service On first sight, given that long list, it may appear that there is no need for further protection for tenants in the private rented sector. However, noble Lords will be aware that in a number of the areas I have referred to there are ongoing problems. For example, after the list of rights that appear on the Government’s website, a section then tells you what to do if you feel that you are not able to exercise those rights. It suggests that you should first complain to the landlord; failing that, you should complain to one of the recently set up "designated persons"—that is, an MP, a councillor or one of the various tenant panels; and finally, if all that fails, you should go to your local council. Notwithstanding the responsibilities in some areas—but not all—that local councils have, as most noble Lords will be aware, many councils simply do not have the resources and expertise sufficiently to deal with the wide-ranging types of complaints that will and do come forward. The county court mediation process has of course been successfully used on a number of occasions, but there is a problem, due to various legal arguments as to whether private sector landlords are defined as "suppliers". Can the Minister tell us whether, if landlords are not defined as suppliers, that particular problem means they will fall outside the remit of that mediation service?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I have Amendment 33A in this group. I do not want to say too much but give general support to the two amendments spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, which tackle the question of the register from opposite ends but which are mutually complementary, as far as I can see—there are two different purposes but both would be desirable. There are two points in this amendment First, it is our view that wherever possible, local authorities should have discretion over what they do, and therefore this question of whether a local register of private landlords should be set up and collected should be a matter for the local authority concerned. For all the reasons put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, and indeed to a degree by the noble Lord, Lord Flight—as well as those in the very interesting contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which bring in a different dimension altogether—I suspect that most authorities would want to do it, because of the value there would be. However, the real reason we would like to see it is for local housing purposes, to enable a local authority to maintain proper scrutiny over the private rented sector in its area and to more easily take action when action is required. My amendment is a statement against "one size fits all"-ism to some extent, but if the Government were minded to set up the kind of register that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is proposing, and it were compulsory for all local authorities, I do not think we would squeal too much Secondly, it seems to us that a register ought to pay for itself. An ordinary register would not be terribly expensive to run, and it ought to pay for itself rather than requiring further contributions from local authorities. Those are the two reasons for my amendment I listened carefully to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Flight. I am not sure that the council tax register as such would be a particularly efficient way to do this, since as I understand it, people only really register for council tax in the sort of sense he is talking about when they are new residents in a property. Over a period of time, they might well provide the information he wants, but in the short run I do not think they would, because people simply pay the bills they get each year rather than filling a form in to register again afresh each year. No doubt these are details which could be discussed.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): Indeed, but it would not be compulsory to send it back—or perhaps it would if the legislation said that it was. Equally, it might be more efficient to do it with the electoral register. I do not know, but I am sure it could be done. However, there is a growing consensus on this, and sooner or later Parliament will have to legislate on the Government’s behalf. Registers of private landlords are going to be required for a number of varied purposes, which have been discussed around the Committee today.
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Anthony Robert Greaves (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I do not understand how a simple act of telling the council that you are the owner of a property is a huge regulatory burden. But putting that on one side, how is a council supposed to crack down on a rogue landlord if it does not know who owns the property?
Housing and Planning Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-09
Topic: Housing
Diana Margaret Maddock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, if I may briefly intervene, I remember having great discussions about this matter on previous Housing Bills a long time ago. When the Bill with this provision in it originally came forward, we flagged up that there would be problems on it. I urge the Government to look again at this. They can look back at the discussions we had in those days about how to describe an HMO and the issue about the three storeys. Some of us have been in this House and doing housing over a number of years. I do not think that there is anybody else in the Committee right this minute who would have done this when I did, but there will be Members of the House who remember it very well.