HC Deb 25 May 1979 vol 967 cc1452-64

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Brooke.]

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Steen (Liverpool, Wavertree)

This is the last debate before the recess, and I apologise to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, whom I welcome to the Front Bench, for delaying his departure. I know that he is far too conscientious to be planning a holiday. However, getting away from this place will help to clear his mind and will allow him to dwell on some of the important issues that face his Department.

What is it like to live on the vast soulless council estates that can be seen on the peripheries of our major towns and cities, and what must we do to make life more bearable for those who occupy them? If my hon. Friend is not to take a holiday, I am sure that he will dwell on that question over the recess.

Rightly, there has been concern about high-rise blocks that lurk in many council estates. They are dreadful buildings and they do dreadful things to people. They isolate and insulate them from one another and do untold damage to generations of young children who are brought up in them.

My hon. Friend may spend time reflecting on the damage that State dependency has done to generations compelled to live in public housing. He will conclude that Socialist philosophy that the State knows best has been dramatically disproved by the very existence of high-rise blocks. They have been rejected by those who live in them, who will do anything to get out of them. If living proof is needed of the misery created by Socialism, it is to be found among those who live in the twilight zones of our cities.

What of the vast estates that do not have high-rise blocks? They have a problem that I believe is far worse. These are the estates that have low rise but high density. They have spine blocks or cluster blocks. The last thing that the tenants wish to do is to buy their homes. More and more are talking about blowing up their estates rather than buying their homes.

Phrases such as "high rise" and "inner city" are now well into the urban malaise terminology, yet for all the concern that has been expressed on both sides of the House about our cities' problems, and in spite of the £100 million that has been spent on research since 1968 specifically on tackling urban squalor, there is little evidence of improvements.

The advent of council housing on an enormous scale has brought with it a new type of bureaucracy. Planners, advisers, architects, a plethora of civil servants, maintenance men and inspectors are all employed in the public sector. They have been responsible for the buildings, yet the buildings have become worse and tenants have become more miserable. Regardless of the shape or size, and regardless of whether they are low or high density, the cost yardstick, or Parker Morris standards, have been applied. We now have more dissatisfied people living in units of public housing than any other European country. That is why the Conservatives made council housing a central issue in the election campaign and why we shall sell as many houses as we can to sitting tenants in the hope that that will start to create change.

I shall refer to the estates on the edges of many of our towns and cities, but especially to those in the North-West and in Liverpool which were built on the former green field sites, when the inner city slums were demolished. The most recent of those built in the past decade are in areas known as Belle Vale and Netherley. The former is in my constituency and the latter is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Thornton).

Belle Vale has what have become and what are known as odious spine blocks, while Netherley has cluster blocks. The Belle Vale estate was designed by an experienced firm of architects in about 1970. It has won design award after design award since then. What were the architects after? The quality of the fabric that they used was up to standard. However, they did not appear to be planning homes for people to live in. They cannot claim that what they produced possibly makes up a good community or creates a caring neighbourhood. Was their brief to build transit camps or shelters, for that is what they have created? Many of the tenants feel ashamed to name their estate as the place in which they live.

What is it that makes the estates so dreadful? It is not so much the shadow of the spine blocks that looms over the whole of the estate, nor the density of the housing, but the total absence of space for children to play, the absence of trees, grass, shrubs or plants, the absence of playgrounds, play space, shops, community centres and youth clubs. There is not even a hall in which people may meet. Approximately 3,000 adults live in Belle Vale estate and about 5,000 young children. Some say that it has the highest child population on any estate in Europe. The majority of those children are under the age of 18.

The families living on that estate feel that they have been sentenced by the housing department to a spell in the spine blocks as a kind of punishment. The planners also made sure that, once they got families into these spine blocks, they would have difficulty getting out. They were built six storeys high, with narrow flights of stairs which make it virtually impossible for a young mother, with her shopping, pushchair and children, to get up and down to and from her flat. For that reason young children are kept indoors.

Not surprisingly, when the children get outside they feel pent up and angry. The young vandals at Belle Vale are those who are rebelling against the inhuman conditions in which they are forced to live. They are showing the public housing authority, in their own way, how much they loathe and detest the circumstances in which they are compelled to survive.

The level of vandalism, the House will not be surprised to hear, is enormous. The estate looks as though it has suffered from successive bomb blasts at every corner. There is a thin film of glass covering every street and roadway from the shattered glass caused by vandalism of the windows in the homes on the estate. When I was last on the estate, a few weeks ago, I think that approximately one in three of the flats had broken windows or was completely boarded up—and this estate is but seven or eight years old.

If this is not a place for the young, neither is it a place for the old. The planners were concerned to make sure that life would be miserable for the old as well as the young, so that they could spend the remaining days of their lives suffering from incessant noise caused by young families overhead. That is why the old people's homes were placed under the spine blocks, so that they could get the full brunt of badly insulated floors.

The noise is deafening when one is on the ground floor in these specially built old people's flats underneath the spine blocks. That is not all that they have to suffer. They especially suffer from the insults and abuse hurled at them by gangs of young thugs. They are subjected to every known vulgarity and humiliation by groups which congregate around their flats and jeer and taunt them. If the old people venture outside, they must be careful not to be struck by the never-ending rubbish thrown from windows high up in the spine blocks. Shoes, tables and television sets have all found their way into the small compounds at the bottom of the spine blocks where the elderly live.

There is now litter which is knee deep in places. The rubbish containers, some four or five feet high at the end of the spine block chutes down which people living in the spine block flats send their rubbish, are usually smouldering because children have set light to them. The smell of charred paper and burning rubbish pervades the whole estate when the wind blows in a particular direction.

The underground car parks under the spine blocks were skilfully designed with massive iron bars and gates to protect them from the people living there. Even these are now empty. The reason is clear. Those who left their cars there have learned what happens to them. Like vultures, the gangs descend, take the cars to bits and within a few days only the sh[...] of the cars are left. They are to [...]en there today.

There is also a problem of damp on the estate. It is not damp from outside but damp from inside, which cannot get out. I have heard that conditions are so bad that some families are starting to mushroom-farm on their walls. Some of the rooms are so badly affected that they cannot be used at all.

This is an estate which won architectural awards only a few years ago. This is public housing which the State has paid to have built. The people living there are those who have been placed there by the public authority and who have nowhere else to live. They are people often at the end of their tether, who were placed there because they could find no other accommodation.

It is for this reason that I believe that the Minister faces a special responsibility. No matter whether it was a Labour or a Conservative Administration who built these spine blocks all over the country—no matter which party is responsible—I now fear that he has a special responsibility to deal with them, because there are special problems which cannot be coped with by the local councils.

Residents on the Belle Vale estate have done their best to mitigate and alleviate the situation. There is an active residents' association, which has fought for improvements year after year and has done a splendid job. There is a remarkable vicar, the Rev. Neil Coslett of St. Mark's church, who has campaigned year after year to get improvements for the people living there. But quite clearly the problems which the residents and the three Conservative councillors in the area have faced have been too daunting for anyone to tackle at a local level.

Some say that estates such as Belle Vale are not homes fit for heroes but that at least they are better than slums which lack basic amenities and which were formerly placed in the inner city areas. However, I am convinced that this is not so. The new slums are more sinister, for although they provide shelter they can never provide a community or neighbourhood. They offer a psychological oppression aimed at breaking down the spirits of the people living there rather than giving them new hope of a home and a family. That is a new dimension in these estates.

As a result of this oppression in the area, it is not surprising that there is a widespread use of drugs. The use of tranquillisers, particularly among young mothers who find the stress and strain of living there too great, has become commonplace. The social services are inundated with families that cannot cope.

Not surprisingly, the estate provides a fertile ground for rearing adults who are less able, more unhappy, more unbalanced, who in turn form less stable relationships as adults and who produce disturbed and unfulfilled children of their own. This is the cycle of deprivation to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), when Secretary of State for Social Services, referred and in which he invested nearly £500,000 of taxpayers' money on research. I am waiting, as I am sure is the House, for the results of that research. I fear that all these problems are still going on, yet we have not yet heard what that research says.

The social cost to society of this estate and others like it, let alone the financial cost of building and servicing, is quite astronomical. No one willingly stays on Belle Vale. More and more flats remain empty for longer periods, because no one wants to move into them. Once the flats are empty, they get boarded up. But the vandals still break in. It is not just the young who are ripping out the plumbing, tearing out the light fittings and removing the doors. But, as a result of that action, pensioners wake up in the morning to find water pouring through their ceilings as the water leaks from the plumbing which has been torn out on the top floor of the spine block. The old people at the bottom of the spine blocks merely wait day by day for the next catastrophe.

As the estate gets worse and the housing deteriorates, only the hardest pressed will accept living there. This increasingly means that those with a criminal element congregate there. Attempts by the city council to put young families alongside have been as disastrous as its policy towards forcing a mix through neighbourhood comprehensive schooling. It is a new kind of peacetime concentration camp, from which everyone dreams of escaping but which few do. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the sort of misery which illustrates the squalor of life. For many decent young couples and older people, life there is a continual nightmare. That is why I ask my hon. Friend today to do something about it. He needs powers, first of all, to ban the building of any such vast estate ever again. It should be something of the past. Belle Vale should be the last housing disaster area ever built. But that is not quite enough. I believe that the Minister must do something about the estates that are there and not just prevent local authorities building anything like them.

The past five years have seen the city council concerned about Belle Vale and many similar estates. It has had meeting after meeting. It has tried to deal with the tenants' complaints. It has tried to halt the mass exodus. It has tried to stop the decline and depression of the area. But it has failed to do so.

At this stage, I must give credit to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. Alton)—whom I cannot see in his place—who is now chairman of the Liverpool housing committee. He set up a working party to consider the problems of spine blocks and cluster blocks and the cost of selective demolition. I say that I am sorry that he is not in the Chamber, because the Minister may remember that just before the general election the hon. Member was deploring in the national newspapers the absence of hon. Members from the Chamber on Fridays. He has obviously caught this disease, along with most other hon. Members. I am sorry that he has not found time to come here today. However, he has contributed to this important field and it is significant that his working party is looking at the selective demolition of council housing of the kind that I have described at Belle Vale.

I know the arguments against pulling down this disastrous housing. In the Belle Vale case, the argument is that there is a 50-year loan charge still to pay, and Belle Vale, as I have said, is only nine years old. It is said that it is just not possible to pull down the estate when there is so much money still to be paid off. However, perhaps the Minister could ask the Government actuaries to do some arithmetic over the recess as to what is the likely cost to society, what are the effects on families who are currently living in Belle Vale, and how much money will be spent, for example, on special schooling for children there, special health care and unemployment benefits. As the Minister knows, it costs nearly £5,000 a year to keep one young person in a community home and an equal sum to keep a child in a children's home. There are tranquillisers, bad health from the damp, and all the repairs that will need to be done.

I am quite convinced that in sheer cash terms it would be a much greater cost to keep that estate up for another 30, 40 or 50 years than to pull down the most oppressive spine blocks in which no one wants to live. This is not just a cash equation. It is also a social equation. The Government have a social responsibility, and not just a financial one, if they want to prevent a violent and dissatisfied younger generation from being brought up on this estate.

I have spoken with some feeling about the horrors of this particular aspect. I have been concerned about the conditions ever since it was built. I have seen it deteriorate. I have seen the people on it deteriorate and become more unhappy. This is one estate of many all over the country which has these spine blocks or cluster blocks. It is a new phenomenon. We have been through the high rise era. We are now moving into the spine block and cluster block era.

I hope that the Minister will today tell the House that he will not offer platitudes. I am not blaming him for this estate. I am just telling him about it. I hope that he will give real hope to those who live there, many of whom have given up in despair of anything ever being done. Only the most extreme action will result in an improvement, and unless the Minister has the worst parts of this estate pulled down there will not be an improvement at all because there will not be the space and the opportunities to put right what successive Governments and councils have allowed to continue unchanged.

4.19 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) for welcoming me to this Dispatch Box. I shall do my best to justify his kind remarks. I have listened with close and sympathetic attention to the plight of the tenants about whom he spoke and the horrifying conditions under which they live. He has drawn on a great deal of local knowledge and proposed some trenchant remedies to the problems in Liverpool. That city is lucky to have such a dedicated champion.

It will be a major challenge for housing managers and local housing committees over the next 10 or 20 years to work out the best use for some of the architectural, shall I call them, creations of the last decade. Too often the deck access schemes, high rise towers, spine blocks and cluster blocks referred to by my hon. Friend were put up without any effort to consult the housing officers who have to maintain them or, perhaps more important, the tenants who have to occupy them. That is why we find so many council estates where the environment is inadequate and maintenance has fallen far behind. The approach would have been totally different if these estates had been built for the open market. A private developer would have been much more alert to what the customer wanted, whereas local authorities seem all too often to overlook the desires of their tenants.

I shall not comment in detail on the Belle Vale situation. If the local authority is proposing measures requiring decisions by my Department, I must be cautious in what I say today. Any approach by the local authority will be dealt with quickly, sympathetically and carefully.

My hon. Friend's remarks also concerned general housing management. We cannot expect tenants to be ready to share the responsibility for improving conditions unless we recognise that they have a point of view about what should be done. That applies not just to Belle Vale but to many other council estates that I can think of. Where the tenants have no voice in decisions about their estates, they will understandably regard the housing department as remote and impersonal. In that climate vandalism and crime are bound to flourish.

Mr. Steen

Will my hon. Friend invite the Liverpool city council housing department to submit evidence to him on the merits of selected demolition of parts of Belle Vale and possibly ask for his help?

Mr. Finsberg

If the Liverpool authority is able to elect a chairman for the appropriate commitee, I shall be delighted to see any submissions, but it must first put its own house in order and consider Belle Vale and other estates for which it is responsible.

Our commitment to introducing a tenants' charter is intended to alleviate some of the problems, but it will not bring an immediate solution to the problems of Belle Vale. In the first instance, that is for the authorities in Liverpool to grapple with. I repeat, however, that I shall look at whatever those authorities may send me.

The introduction of a tenants' charter will provide a new framework. Council tenants will have a clear and comprehensive set of rights and can express their personalities and share in the responsibility for their future. That is in stark contrast to the way that most Socialist councils treat their tenants, as mere voting serfs. Those days should be long over, and we will try to put an end to that.

There is no future in pouring in resources to improve or maintain estates if the tenants do not take an interest and contribute practical, voluntary support. My hon. Friend said that there was some degree of involvement, but the position is so disheartening that it is not the sort that we would like to see.

It must be obvious to tenants that play areas and community centres, for example, are the top priority. If the authority is spending its resources on something less important, they are bound to feel aggrieved It may not be a matter of resources. If there are disproportionate numbers of children or young thugs causing annoyance on estates, the housing allocation policy may need reviewing. My Department has provided factual guidance on allocation policies through the housing services advisory group. I hope that our tenants' charter will be used in a flexible and constructive spirit in bringing about an improvement for all who wish to remain as council tenants.

I said earlier that the immediate problems are for Liverpool itself. Where there is a question of demolition, that must be for the local authority to decide. However, an estate such as Belle Vale must represent a substantial capital investment which has only just begun to be paid off, and if my Department were asked to consider whether housing subsidy should continue to be paid after demolition I am certain that we would want to know that the possible alternatives had been fully explored. I shall ask my Department and the Government actuaries, or whoever is responsible, to take on board my hon. Friend's idea of a more positive cost benefit analysis which is not related just to the cost of bricks and mortar.

Mr. Steen

The problem is that not just my hon. Friend's Department is involved. The Department of Health and Social Security and the Home Office pay the bills for various items involved in the situation at Belle Vale. It is not just one purse but three or four or more, and that is why I ask my hon. Friend to involve other Departments in the exercise.

Mr. Finsberg

My hon. Friend makes long speeches and I have heard him make superb long speeches in Committee. I am trying not to give him platitudes and I have one or two ideas to put forward. It may be that the clock will beat me, but I will try to give him details of one or two of the ideas that we are considering.

We are doing a lot of work on social problems. We have had detailed case studies carried out on a number of problem estates, including one at Netherley. They have just been completed and they bring out clearly the importance of involving and consulting tenants at all stages. We have organised regional seminars to convey these findings to housing managers and local councillors.

My hon. Friend may feel, as I do, that action is more urgent than research findings, however practically oriented. I have explained, however, that in relation to Belle Vale he has to look to the authority. My Department is always prepared to help in working out the best combinations of practical measures to improve rundown estates. It is also prepared to offer advice based on the experience of housing authorities which have successfully reversed the environmental and social decline on their estates. We are now taking that a stage further. My Department is considering starting up in collaboration with local authorities three experimental projects in housing estate management.

We are going to look for the most effective ways of managing estates, with an eye to the human and social problems mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I expect allocation policies, better maintenance and community facilities to play an important part. The balance between these and other items in the projects will no doubt depend on the local situation, including tenants' own views on priorities. The projects will act as pilot demonstrations of the policies that I have outlined. At that stage, we would try to involve any other Departments that appeared to have a direct interest.

Some authorities have begun to try out new approaches to their least-attractive estates. The Conservative-controlled Greater London Council, for example, has reduced the density of lettings, provided accommodation for youth leaders, and strengthened the liaison with tenants' associations. It has also introduced measures to give tenants a sense of control over the common parts in flats, as well as over their own dwelling. This sense of personal involvement in the property is crucial if we are to achieve better standards of upkeep and reduce vandalism. That is precisely the sort of measure that we shall be exploring and monitoring through the projects I referred to.

We shall also want to look carefully at the scope for sales, even in so-called difficult estates to let. It is encouraging how attached people often are to their homes, however depressing the surroundings. It is even more surprising how the efforts of people who have bought their homes can help to raise the expectations of many others who, for one reason or another, do not think that they want to buy.

The problems of rundown estates, such as those mentioned by my hon. Friend in his fascinating speech, will be very much in our minds when we draw up our firm proposals for a tenants' charter. We will do our best within the limits of statutes to meet the points that my hon. Friend has put so clearly, concisely and fairly.

The problems of rundown estates are not confined to Liverpool. They are symptoms of the disease that has been overcoming our inner cities in recent years. As long as I have responsibility in the Department, I shall do my best to try to arrest the decline and begin to roll it back.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Four o'clock till Monday 11 June, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 23 May.