RIGHT TO BUY FOR POLICE OFFICERS (Hansard, 21 December 1983)

§ Mr. Eldon Griffiths (Bury St. Edmunds)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong)
With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment (a) to the new clause, leave out 'Chief Officer of Police' and insert 'Police Authority'.

§ Mr. Griffiths
I should like first to provide hon. Members with the background to the new clause. Police officers have traditionally been housed in provided accommodation. Regrettably, they have often been housed in colonies which became ghettoes that isolated them from the rest of the community. In recent and more enlightened times, police officers have been encouraged to follow the trend of the rest of the population, and to move from their provided accommodation into home ownership. That trend was greatly encouraged by the Police Advisory Board which, as its working party report clearly said, identified important financial savings that could be made by reducing the housing stocks held by police authorities. Savings on maintenance and replacement could also be enjoyed.
Thus, the sale of surplus police houses has now become a regular feature of most forces. Not unnaturally, police tenants of those houses have, from time to time, availed themselves of the opportunity to move into home ownership by buying them. However, for the most part they have had to purchase them at strictly open market prices.
I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend the Minister has been able, in the new clauses and amendments intr:tduced today, to achieve equilibrium—as he put it—between the position in England and Wales and that in Scotland. As I understand it, a police officer who is allowed to purchase his police authority home will henceforth be able to do so using the same discount arrangements as apply to another type of tenant who has had the same period of occupancy. That is a material gain, and the police service is most grateful to the Minister for his co-operation in that respect.
My new clause also deals with the right to purchase police houses that have become surplus to the operational needs of a police force. There are hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of police houses that are now surplus to the operational requirements of the police. It is difficult to decide when a police house has become surplus to requirements, but my new clause would provide that the decision should rest with the chief officer, who alone can determine whether a house is any longer operationally necessary for his force. I note the amendment tabled by the Opposition and I well understand why they have done so. However, the point is that where a police house has manifestly become surplus to need, and is either standing empty and is a waste of resources, or is occupied by a police officer not for operational purposes, but because it is convenient to him or the authority, there should be, prima facie, an obligation on the police authority to dispose of it.
If my hon. Friend the Minister can accept that proposition, I hope that he can also accept at least the principle behind my amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Mr. Stanley), the former Minister for Housing and Construction, and my hon. Friend who adorns that post today, have been active in writing to and circularising police authorities, asking them not only to provide discounts to police officers who buy such houses but to dispose of surplus houses.
To put it mildly, the response has been very patchy. Authorities have discretion about enabling police officers to purchase such houses, and only two of them—Merseyside and Staffordshire—dispose of such houses to police tenants at the full rate of discount. Several other schemes with lesser discounts have been arranged in the forces of Surrey, Hertfordshire, Gwent, Greater 481 Manchester and Sussex. There are some forces where agreements in principle with their respective police authorities have either been concluded, or are nearing completion, but, regrettably, some of those schemes have been put aside by the full local authority, occasionally on political grounds.
My concern rests with the majority of authorities, where agreement has not been reached to implement such schemes, and where surplus houses have accumulated and are not being disposed of. The new clause would deal with that by placing a duty on the police authority which owns a house that is provided to accommodate police officers, but which has become surplus to requirements, to offer it to any police officer who is resident in it. Any police officer to whom such an offer was made would be able to purchase at the same discount as is available to any resident of a local or public authority house.
I do not think there is any point in my pressing the matter all the way because I am well aware that my hon. Friend does not have available to him the powers to compel police authorities. I am well aware that there are arguments against a Government compelling chief officers in particular in respect of operational matters. That is bound to include operational police housing. Nevertheless, I hope that he will accept that there is a problem—surplus houses that ought to be disposed of—and there is a solution—that police authorities should make them available to police officers at the full discount. My new clause would achieve that result.

§ Mr. Allan Roberts
If a policeman is living in a police house, how can it be surplus to requirements?

§ Mr. Eldon Griffiths
Often where a police house is surplus, and for one reason or another a police officer who may have newly moved into an area and who may be intending to purchase a home requires accommodation, he may have the opportunity to use a house that has been declared surplus to operational needs for a period of time while he is providing himself with other accommodation. That is a slightly complicated situation, but it happens. It would not be in the interests of the House if I were to pursue it at great length.

§ Mr. Gow
My hon. Friend has moved his new clause eloquently and persuasively, but I want to tell the House briefly why I shall advise that we should not agree to the new clause and why I hope that my hon. Friend will agree to withdraw it.
The prospect of any empty house remaining unoccupied for a period is unacceptable to every person who cares about meeting housing need. I agree with my hon. Friend that in some parts of the country police authorities have allowed houses that are surplus to requirement to remain empty. That I deplore, as does my hon. Friend.
He has drawn attention to the widely differing practices of police authorities under the current consent to sell surplus dwellings at a discount. Some are prepared to sell at right-to-buy levels of discount; some are not prepared to offer any discount. Nevertheless—I say this to my hon. Friend with real regret—I do not think that it would be right to place an obligation on police authorities to sell houses in the way that my hon. Friend suggests.

§ Dr. Alan Glyn (Windsor and Maidenhead)
To what extent is this a problem? Is it hundreds or thousands of houses?

§ Mr. Eldon Griffiths
There are 200 in Surrey.

§ Mr. Gow
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Griffiths) tells us that there are 200 in Surrey. I have no figures. My hon. Friend probably has better figures than I have about police accommodation surplus to requirement.
The essence of the Housing Act 1980 is that it gives certain defined categories of sitting tenant a right to buy their homes. We cannot build into that scheme a provision that gives tenants a right to buy only where the landlord is prepared to sell and purports to give to more than one person a right to buy the same house. The House has agreed the Government's proposals to extend the right-tobuy provisions to certain county council tenants. A police committee is usually formed as a committee of a county council. To that extent, police housing is relevant in the context of the Government's amendments.
We have concluded, however, that dwellings provided by a police authority to police officers should be excluded from the security and right-to-buy provisions of the Bill. Such dwellings are provided in pursuance of the Police Regulations 1979. It would not be right in my view to impose a duty to sell dwellings provided to officers under those regulations.
That leaves an important question. In the absence of legislation, what can be done to ensure that houses that are not occupied and are surplus to requirement are brought into use? The answer must lie with the police authorities. Under the terms of the general consents, we have given those authorities the right to sell on the same terms that are available to district councils. I hope that the authorities that possess houses surplus to requirement will reconsider the powers we have already given to them, and that they will exercise those powers in the most positive way.
In the light of what I have said—I give my hon. Friend an undertaking to keep the matter under review—I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his new clause.

§ Mr. Eldon Griffiths
I am obliged to the Minister. I am necessarily disappointed that he does not feel able to go further, although I understand the constraints upon him.
I said from a sedentary position that I understood there were some 200 surplus houses in Surrey. I am advised that the exact position is that some 200 police houses have been identified as being surplus to the existing or expected operational requirements of the force. These are being offered for sale to police officers over a two-year period, which seems a curious way of going about it. Either they are surplus or they are not.
7.15 pm
To respond to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Dr. Glyn), I should have thought there are many hundreds across the country and it may be into four figures, so it is not an insignificant problem. I find it a curious situation that a surplus police house in some authorities can be, and sometimes is, absorbed by the local authority into its general housing stock, whereupon, on becoming tenanted by an existing council house occupier, it must by law immediately be sold at a considerable discount. Thus, in practice, if the police authority does not offer it to the police officer, one 483 way or another it may well end up being sold at a discount to another person. My hon. Friend will understand that that does not sit very well in the mind of police officers.
I ask my hon. Friend whether he will equip himself with the figures so that he knows the size of the problem and that, in such way as he has available in collecting housing statistics—I believe he has considerable ways of so doing—he requires of local authorities that the police authority should make him aware that houses have been declared surplus to operational need to identify the dimension of the problem. He and I in our various ways, no doubt with assistance from hon. Gentlemen opposite, will be able to bring such persuading powers to bear on the recalcitrant authorities.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.