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Rented Housing

Indeed. I shall come on to the housing revenue account. The social rented sector covers housing associations, arm's length management organisations and council properties, and there are advantages to all three. Turning to the private rented sector, there were a number of points that we wanted to make. I reiterate that the private rented sector is extremely diverse. Large parts of it benefit from good-quality and excellent landlords and provide for real need. However, other parts are of extremely poor quality. For example, the private rented sector has the least fuel-efficient housing of any sector in this country. At the low end, some private rented properties are of very poor quality, have appalling management who offer poor service generally in respect of repairs and maintenance, give tenants little security and are, moreover, extremely expensive. We focus most of our attention on that unsatisfactory bottom end rather than the whole sector. We think that there is a great need for more variety in the length of tenancies available. Many private tenants are concerned by the fact that tenancies seem to have very little security and that people are forced to move frequently. That is particularly important where people have been directed by councils to the private rented sector because insufficient council accommodation is available. We believe that the Government should have responded to the Law Commission's findings and its suggestion of a common tenancy agreement that would apply across the social and private rented sectors and give more security. The Government have still not responded to the findings, and we wish that they would. I note that the private rented sector report by Rugg and Rhodes suggests that there should be more concentration on the reasons why tenancies fail rather than a focus just on the contract. The Committee recommended at the time that greater research should be done on the effect of buy-to-let investment and how the resources of public sector bodies could be used to direct private sector investment into appropriate areas to create more mixed communities. We noted that poor management often occurred with what the sector called ““pop and mom”” landlords, or private individuals who bought one, two or three properties as a way—so they thought—of accumulating capital. Such properties were often extremely poorly managed. Personally, I think that the credit crunch has reduced the urgency of some of the Committee's concerns about how buy to let operates, but some still remain. We are concerned about the regulation in general of the private rented sector. Again, the Rugg and Rhodes report suggests light-touch regulation across that sector, and the Committee agrees. The licensing regime for homes in multiple occupation definitely needs to be strengthened, and local authorities should be encouraged to prioritise problem landlords in the HMO—houses in multiple occupation—sector. We think that that would provide a good foundation for introducing a system of accreditation for landlords and letting agents, devised by trade bodies and enforced by the involvement of local authorities, with ultimate oversight by the TSA. That would be in line with what the Rugg report suggests. Interestingly, it is also favoured by the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the body representing landlords, because good landlords have an interest in the proper policing of bad landlords. We made a number of points relating to housing providers. We believe that regulation in the social rented sector should minimise administrative burdens and free up resources for the vital task of maximising supply. In the private sector, we want the Government to consider reforms to the regulatory and taxation systems to incentivise the supply of new rented housing and better management of existing housing. We also stress that the Government needs to reform the housing revenue account system as soon as possible to remove perverse incentives and enable councils to use the system to fund the construction and acquisition of more social housing. We want housing associations to be able to use their surpluses to increase the supply of social housing. They should also be enabled and encouraged to diversify into other private and social enterprises, backed up by Government support where appropriate. We commend the efforts that a number of social housing providers are already making to avoid the negative consequences of polarising worklessness, and also the work that they are doing with their own tenants to encourage and support those tenants who are not in work to get into work. We highlighted the need for allocation schemes, whether they are run by housing associations or by councils, to be designed to enable the movement of tenants who are genuinely making an attempt to become more engaged in employment, thereby allowing them to move nearer to their work and minimise transport costs. Regarding housing benefit, we highlighted a number of reforms to the system that we thought were absolutely essential. However, we also cautioned the Government in making those reforms to ensure the continued viability of the ““temporary to settled”” schemes that a number of councils are using, whereby housing benefit money is effectively used to enable the properties that are being used in the private sector to finish up in the social housing stock. I have obviously skated over a huge amount of work that our report covers. Rented housing is a huge and complex issue, and the report made more than 60 recommendations or conclusions. The Government response to our report has been broadly positive, but there is a certain lack of detail in many areas. Perhaps perfectly reasonably, the Government have referred us to documents or reports that are not yet published, including the housing reform Green Paper, which is due at the end of the year, and the review of housing finance, which is due in spring 2009. The Committee will look at such documents as they appear, and will check whether or not they respond to the recommendations in the report that have not yet been responded to. In conclusion, I believe that this report has come at an absolutely crucial time for housing policy. The creation of the new regulator of social housing, the Tenants Services Authority, is very welcome and the Committee hopes that it will eventually become responsible for tenants in all social housing. In addition, the Homes and Communities Agency, which was formed by the amalgamation of the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships, is particularly necessary, given the extra strain that the credit crunch is placing on the public sector in its attempts to take forward regeneration and create new housing. We believe that all those developments are significant milestones in the progress of the Government's housing policy and many of our recommendations will fall to the HCA or the TSA to implement. I therefore commend the report to the House. I am interested to hear the points that other Members wish to make, and I hope that we all agree that there is a need to increase the quantity, and improve the quality, of the supply of both social rented and private rented housing.