Localism Bill

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as a councillor in the London Borough of Barnet for 25 years and as chair of its audit committee. For many years, I was a director of an arm’s-length management organisation managing Barnet Homes housing. Currently, I am a member of the standards committee—so I felt that I should speak at Second Reading of the Localism Bill. Clauses 129 and 130, which refer to the duties of homeless persons, take us back to the very dark days of limited offers to homeless people. My noble friend Lady Doocey mentioned this, and I should like to expand on what she said. The idea that local authorities will be able to discharge their duties to the homeless by providing one offer—I repeat, one offer—from a private landlord, without the applicant having any say in being able to reject that offer, is horrifying. For those who have been in local government for many years, it takes us back to the days of two offers. Now we are talking about one offer from a private landlord. What will be considered suitable accommodation may well fall short of what is considered to be decent accommodation. Many of us have seen people housed in private properties that are not decent. With the cap on rents, particularly in London, properties available to local authorities to house their homeless may well be of a lower standard than we would like. Allocating one property, without a choice, from a private landlord will take no account of children’s schools, where people work or the wider family. That will put further onus and cost on the social services because those supports are not there. These clauses do not seem to say where the property will be. I am old enough to remember when London boroughs short of places to house people gave them the fare to seaside resorts where the rent would be paid to those landlords. These clauses are reminiscent of that time and need to be substantially amended. Clause 142 is welcome in that it appears to give tenants of housing associations limited security. Tenants of less than two years must get at least six months’ notice, but what happens in real life? Recently, I was made aware of tenants of a very reputable housing association. They were happy, as was the landlord, but the lease to that private landlord from the housing association had come to an end. The landlord was happy for the lease to continue under the same terms, but the social landlord said that it was its policy that tenants should move to new premises because it did not carry one lease over to another. Under the Bill, we must give stability to people housed by housing associations. Clause 145 to 153 are welcome. They will enable councils that own properties, which are often managed by arm’s-length management organisations, to keep their rental income. That will be a great benefit for many people, such as in my local authority where a lot of rental income does not stay with the local authority but goes back to the centre. However, I have a cynical suspicion. If local authorities are allowed to keep all their rental income, are we guaranteed that they will keep their current grants and standard spending assessments or will there be a formula? I understand that one man in Whitehall knows what it means. Clauses 172 to 176 concern me. I am far from convinced that we want mayoral development areas. I am talking as a London borough councillor and that is the flavour of how I look at it. It appears to be the opposite of localism. The power in London in particular should be with the local authorities. Mayoral development areas, which perhaps are where the mayor is the mayor of that local authority, may be allowable. If the aim is to get more empty land into use, such land should be taxed to encourage hoarders of land to bring it into use or there should be land auctions. There is a lot of private land for which people are waiting for the right price. In the mean time, many thousands of people are not housed, which is a disgrace. That can be linked to the announcement made only this week by the Government. They are to bring unused government-owned and local authority land into use by encouraging it to be sold off—but, sadly, not necessarily for social housing. A lot of land out there is privately owned, as well as that which is local authority owned. Clause 158 deals with complaints to the housing ombudsman. I should like this to be a righting of the wrongs for the benefit of the tenant. I read this part of the Bill a few times. It gives me the feeling that like many complaints to an ombudsman the result will be the fining of the so-called offender. It talks about the determination of the ombudsman. The Bills needs to say how the tenant will benefit. After reading it, I cannot see any guarantee that that ombudsman’s decision will not be purely a fine on the culprit rather than a benefit for the tenant. Turning away from housing, paragraph 9L of Schedule 2 allows a local authority to change its system from an executive back to a committee system. I come from a local authority where I was part of the administration. I was a cabinet member for development and regeneration, and I would give little speeches saying that it is a dreadful system because I have unparalleled power to do almost anything I want, but it is not democratic. That is the case with the executive system where the member of the executive without portfolio has the power while the rest of the council has little of it. I serve on a council with 63 councillors, of which 10 members are on the executive. They are all from one party, not my party, but it has been mine. Those 10 members have interesting jobs managing and running the council, but jobs have to be found for the remaining 53 members as chairs or members of scrutiny committees that have little or no value. I would like to see, as the Bill suggests, a move back to the committee system with a chair of committee for housing, social services, adult education and so on. The Bill would enable this, but states that it will happen in London after the next local elections, which are three years away. I would like the Bill to be amended so that local authorities are given the opportunity to bring about this change in the way councils are run sooner rather than later. Finally, as a serving London borough councillor, I welcome localism and this Bill, but we must be careful to ensure that localism does not just mean devolving power from Whitehall to the city hall or the town hall. This Bill is a leap forward—I originally wrote that it is a huge leap forward, but I shall now say only that it is a leap—but there is room to improve it while it is in your Lordships’ House on its way through Westminster.