HC Deb 15 March 1985 vol 75 cc606-14

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

2.31 pm
Mr. Michael Hancock (Portsmouth, South)

I appreciate that Portsmouth has the highest HIP allocation in the south-east, but that fact reinforces what I am going to say. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to bring Portsmouth's problems to the attention of Parliament. Portsmouth, unfortunately, has all the problems of urban deprivation, bad housing, high unemployment and all the other problems associated more with inner cities in the north of England. Because Portsmouth is set in what some people would consider the somewhat rarefied air of the south coast, its problems are partly or completely ignored by various Government Departments. That is true particularly of housing.

I should like to praise Portsmouth's housing department, in particular the letting section under Mr. Chilcott and Miss Harvey, for the valiant efforts that it has made for housing homeless people and people seeking assistance in the city under the most difficult circumstances. To a certain extent, I also praise the new chairman of the housing committee, Councillor Gregory, who is a member of the Conservative party. To his credit, he has seen how desperate the position is becoming in Portsmouth and has tried to rectify the past 15 years of what I consider to be his colleagues' mismanagement of housing.

My experience as a member of the city council for 14 years and of the housing committee for eight years tells me that housing in my city is the worst that it has been for 25 years. There were 3,987 housing applications received in 1984–85, about 600 of which came from old age pensioners seeking special accommodation.

There are 3,500 people seeking housing assistance in Portsmouth. When we consider that two thirds of the people who apply for housing in Portsmouth never reach the list, the total figure is far in excess of that. The figure does not take into account the 5,000 people living in multi-occupied premises. There is an enormous problem with transfer applications. At present, about 1,800 people are seeking transfers. The problem is not helped by the fact that the 27,000 housing units that we had at our disposal five years ago have now been reduced to only 23,600.

I see the merits of and encourage those people seeking to buy their own homes. Many of them would be foolish if they did not take advantage of the offers being made under the present system for buying council houses. It is OK to pursue that policy provided we ensure that we do not deny housing opportunities for people wanting houses. The situation in Portsmouth, with about 3,500 fewer houses in the past three or four years, is making the task of the housing department and the city council to service the needs of the community virtually impossible to carry out. We need some thoughts and guidance from the Government about that, if about nothing else.

As I have said, the housing waiting list has steadily increased since 1979, to such an extent that the housing department recently published a document which said that its present points scheme was considered to be inadequate accurately to reflect the applicants' housing needs and ensure that those persons in most need of city council housing were given priority on the waiting list. It also felt that it was not an accurate way to measure true housing needs in Portsmouth. The figures produced by the council show that about 11,000 houses are in need of repairs costing over £2,500, and 27,500 properties need external repairs of one form or another. The council's estimate is that at least one in 20 houses need new roofs, as a start to providing good housing for the people.

Despite the extensive home improvement programme in the city — I was an instigator of that programme in 1971, and have fully supported it ever since — the Government's action, with VAT on improvement grants, has made, and will continue to make, the task of seeking to improve those old houses, many of which are 80 or 90 years old, and some of which are 100 years old, extremely difficult to carry out. Many of the people in them are elderly and cannot afford the finance that is now needed. In my constituency, the average for updating and modernising a two-up, two-down, terrace house with the front door going straight on to the street is over £16,000, which is no small sum of money for anybody, let alone for those who are heading towards retirement or have already retired.

With that large number of unfit properties and properties in need of repair, once again the Government should have given sympathetic consideration to the special categories of housing which, unfortunately, have been denied to the city. I am sure that the Minister and his colleagues will argue now and in future that Portsmouth has an extensive home improvement programme, but it is nowhere near enough. If we do not get improved resources, the day of the bulldozer rampaging through the streets of Portsmouth will return. We shall face the consequences of slum clearance again rather than home improvements. That is a sad dereliction of responsibility and of the ambition that the Government pursued with such vigour, with, I am sure, the total agreement of the House, during the first two or three years of their Administration from 1979.

I have already referred to the problems of multi-occupation. Portsmouth has the largest polytechnic in the country, with about 8,500 students. Coupled with seasonal trade, people working in the holiday industry and people coming to the city for holidays, that makes the housing problem particularly difficult in Portsmouth, South. Because of the large numbers of people in multi-occupation, the city council cannot get to grips with and tackle some of the problems that have arisen, some of which would make the antics of Mr. Rachman in the 1960s pale into insignificance by comparison. It is not an uncommon occurrence for landlords to torment and harass residents in the city of Portsmouth, and make their lives a living hell. Despite that, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the city council to do anything but make a token gesture in offering rehousing for people living in such conditions.

The same can be said of the post-war and pre-war blocks of flats all over the constituency of Portsmouth, South and the city as a whole. Families with children live on the 17th floor of blocks that are occupied predominantly by elderly people. There is an enormous pressure on, for example, a mother looking after three children on the 17th floor of a tower block, where it is not an infrequent occurrence for the lifts to be out of action for a day or so a week, making the young mother virtually captive with her young children in the high-rise block. Hon. Members need think only of the problems for the nearby community and for the elderly, with the noise of the childen running about. Once again, because of the constraints on housing finance, the city council is unable to deal with those problems. It should be remembered that I am talking about not one or two but a huge number of people.

DHSS payments in the city of Portsmouth represent one of the biggest scandals of our time with regard to public finance. I recently asked the Secretary of State for Social Services about the amount of money being paid in DHSS payments for bed and breakfast accommodation in the city. I was told that the figures were so great and that it would take so long and cost so much to provide them that he did not want to do so. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will seek some guidance from the DHSS about the situation in Portsmouth. It is not rare for payments in excess of £180 a week to be paid for a husband, wife and two children to live in bed and breakfast accommodation. In many instances, payments of £200 a week for a family are the norm.

Once again, the council can rehouse only a few such families each month. The cost in national resources is enormous. There is not likely to be any incentive for the man to find a job, and in most cases there is no likelihood, at least in the foreseeable future, of him ever obtaining a home.

For example, an unemployed man who is now drawing £180 a week from the DHSS for bed and breakfast accommodation would need a job paying in excess of £230 a week if he was to earn that £180 a week. Such jobs do not arise very frequently in Portsmouth. There is no incentive for him to get a job, because he knows that if he finds a job he will not be able to keep his family in his present bed and breakfast accommodation. Thus, there is a disincentive for him to help himself and to find a job. The city council is faced with the impossible task of trying to find houses for such people virtually daily as applicants come to them.

If we gave the city more resources and it was able to provide accommodation, we could probably save about £100 a week in public money on those families alone. Those resources could then be better used in other areas, in trying to help the community in Portsmouth and in other parts of the country. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at the way in which the Government spend their money on DHSS payments to keep people in accommodation that is often substandard. Frequently, they are nothing more than a licence for the owners of those properties to print money. They should be exposed, and the Government should take action, particularly in areas such as Portsmouth, where the problem is widespread and needs to be investigated and sorted out.

I shall now concentrate on some of the specific problems of the buildings in Portsmouth, and on the Leamington and Solihull blocks in particular. They are 20-year-old tower blocks. In the past three years the city council has spent £2.25 million on those blocks, trying to refurbish them. More than 50 flats in them have major water penetration problems. In a recent report, the city council says that it is having to seek advice from the Department of the Environment and specialist architects in order to try to solve the problem. In the meantime, those living there have to stuff towels round windows 12 floors up in order to stop water being blown into their living rooms. They have to roll back carpets in bedrooms and move beds away from the walls. Yet those blocks are not 20 years old and £2.25 million of public money has been spent in the past three years.

In Portsdown park one can witness a classic blunder in local authority housing. Five hundred and twenty units were built in the highest brick building in Europe. It was begun in 1965 and completed in the early 1970s, yet it has never been right. Present estimates range from £2 million to £4 million, and even to £9 million, to put it right. Even to demolish part of it and to try to rekindle some enthusiasm within the community for living there would cost about £4 million. That money is not available.

In the meantime, 520 families are condemned to living in an environment that neither I nor the Minister would want to live in. Yet the city council has no alternative but to condemn them to living in such properties. The council would describe that as an unfortunate occurrence. I call it a damning indictment of the way in which Government housing policy has gone hopelessly adrift.

The same applies to the many post-war blocks in my constituency. Those blocks require money to be spent on them urgently. Lifts are needed to the third and fourth floors. Parents with shopping and up to three children under the age of five cannot cope with three of four flights of stairs. The flats themselves are riddled with damp, the windows are falling out and there are safety problems for children playing on balconies 30 or 40 ft up. Those blocks constitute a real hazard, but there is no enthusiasm or drive to alter the situation or to bring home the facts to Ministers.

I hope that the Minister will now take an initiative and, if necessary, come to Portsmouth with the Secretary of State and tour the streets. When the Secretary of State came to discuss rate capping he arrived in a helicopter. The cloud was so low that he might as well have been flying over Timbuctoo for all the chance he had of seeing not just the beauty of the city, but the problems that it faces. Nor would he have gleaned much from conversations at the town hall with Conservative politicians who can see no further than their noses. Most of them deny that these things are happening. They do not wish to face the reality of people living in squalor and difficulty.

People whose homes are wet from floor to ceiling in every room are given the pat answer from the environmental health department that it is "condensation", because, in its heart of hearts, the housing department knows that it can do nothing about the problem. It cannot transfer people out, it cannot carry out remedial work and it cannot build new homes, because it does not have the money. We have sold nearly 3,500 council houses, but we cannot use the proceeds to rekindle the housing programme. We cannot use our own money to solve our own problems, because we are tied hand and foot by the Government.

Portsmouth has all the problems of any other inner city area, but, sadly, those problems have been ignored. I ask the Minister to bear in mind five points. First, we hope that he and the Secretary of State will visit Portsmouth pretty sharply.

Secondly, I hope that he will hold an investigation into the housing situation in the city before the next housing investment programme allocation is made. That investigation should go into the problems that I have described, to see whether the city's problems merit a greater allocation of resources.

Thirdly, the Secretary of State should consider the problems of three specific areas — Portsdown park, Leamington and Solihull house and the upgrading of postwar blocks of more than four storeys—because that is where people in council accommodation are suffering most.

Fourthly, the Government should reconsider VAT on home improvements, because it is a sure deterrent to home improvement and creates further unemployment. In view of the large number of properties that require improvements, there should also be a special allocation of resources so that the council has sufficient staff to cater for the demand that would undoubtedly come if the Government would relinquish their grip and rectify the VAT situation.

Lastly, I hope that the Minister will seriously consider making resources available to enable Portsmouth to start afresh with a house building programme that will cater for the true needs of housing in Portsmouth. We can build properties for the elderly until the cows come home, and rightly so, but we also have to accommodate people who have perhaps two or three children and are living in bad conditions in one room in a multi-occupied dwelling. We need a housing programme that relates to the true needs of the community. I hope that the Minister will take note of those points.

2.51 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young)

I can give a very prompt response to the request of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) that a Minister should visit Portsmouth. At this very moment my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government is in Portsmouth. I see from his timetable that he is now talking to the leader, the deputy leader and chief officers of the council. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the Government have honoured that obligation most promptly.

The question of VAT on home improvements is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is probably putting the finishing touches to his Budget at the moment. I shall see that that point is passed on to the Treasury.

The hon. Gentleman's other points relate directly or indirectly to the HIP allocation for Portsmouth in the forthcoming year. The hon. Gentleman asks specifically about three estates. Broadly, it is for Portsmouth to decide whether to apply the resources made available to it to those particular areas or to other claims on the housing programme. The Government would not intervene in what we see as local decisions best taken by the hon. Gentleman himself — I believe that he is still a city councillor—and by other locally elected members.

The problems facing Portsmouth are not unique. Many other local authorities face similar problems. The Government have made available, for the next year, housing capital expenditure for local authorities totalling £2,324 million. That comprises an initial allocation of some £1,600 million, plus nearly £400 million holdback to take account of flexibilities within the control system, and also for a reserve to help with supplementary allocations for those authorities that complied with the call for capital expenditure restraint. There is also the prescribed proportion of capital receipts generated by authorities in 1985–86, which is expected to be about £325 million.

I hope that the hon. Member will accept that the Government have to put a ceiling on the total resources available in that area. Public expenditure must be controlled and public sector housing must contribute to the needs of the economy. We have tried to make sure that the allocations are made, as far as possible, on a basis of need.

The hon. Gentleman recognises that Portsmouth has done moderately well. In November 1983 we told local authorities that they could plan their 1985–86 programme on the basis that their allocation in that year would be at least 80 per cent. of their allocation in 1984–85. The allocation to Portsmouth more than meets that assurance. It is in fact 95 per cent. of the allocation made in 1984–85.

My Department is aware of the special problems in Portsmouth related to defective stock. We have recognised that in the HIP allocations over the past few years. For 1985–86, Portsmouth has been given the highest allocation of all the 65 authorities in the south-east. The total is £6.4 million, including £90,000 for the home insulation scheme. I believe that the council also has substantial receipts available to help to fund the housing programme. Use of those receipts from the sale of assets has allowed the local authority almost to double housing resources in the past three years.

The Government are grateful to those authorities which have kept their spending within the levels requested, and they recognise that this may have involved the authority in taking difficult decisions about priorities. Authorities such as Portsmouth will be assisted with a supplementary allocation in 1985–86 equal to 5 per cent. of the aggregate of the basic allocations made for housing and other services. Further, it is open to Portsmouth to apply for an additional allocation under the homes insulation scheme if it finds that funds under that heading become fully committed.

I was pleased to hear what the hon. Gentleman said about the inflow of capital receipts from the sale of council houses. Portsmouth's scheme was in operation before the right-to-buy scheme was introduced under the 1980 Act, and since records were started in October 1980 more than 3,000 dwellings have been sold. That is good news and is fully in accordance with the Government's objective of bringing home ownership within the reach of as many people as possible. Portsmouth has already sold more than 50 unimproved dwellings for improvement by purchasers under the homesteading arrangements and over 50 low-cost homes in conjunction with developers. It is anticipated that the private sector will complete 500 new dwellings this year, and that is most welcome news. All those initiatives will help to reduce the pressure on rented accommodation.

We recognise that Portsmouth is a densely built-up area and that spare land for housing is difficult to find. For that reason we are giving sympathetic consideration to an application for a derelict land grant for a scheme at Glory Hole, Eastney, for a marina and 139 housing units. The application is for a 50 per cent. capital grant of more than £1.150 million over two years.

On improvements, I understand that annual expenditure on grants is about £3 million compared with £841,000 in 1979–80, and that represents a sizeable increase, mirroring what has happened nationally.

The waiting list of those who have made inquiries about a grant has been reduced significantly over the past few months. To put that in a broader context, Portsmouth obviously understands and is acting on the Government's commitment to improve the housing stock. That commitment has been demonstrated by the measures that we have taken over the past two or three years, introducing a favourable regime for improvement grants.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the large number of elderly applicants, and on checking the waiting lists I can confirm what he said. More than 500 elderly persons were accepted on to the waiting list between February 1984 and February 1985. The council recognises that as an area of greatest need and has, therefore, concentrated in its new build programme on homes for the elderly. I note that 90 units were completed in 1984–85, more are under construction and two new schemes are due to start in 1985–86, providing 77 units of sheltered accommodation. I understand that Portsmouth is also looking at other ways to meet the needs of the elderly, especially by investigating the possible use of a central communication alarm system. That would link elderly public and private sector tenants and owner-occupiers to a central alarm system, allowing them to stay independent and living in their own homes as long as possible.

I would like to commend again the research report recently published by Dr. Anthea Tinker in my Department entitled "Staying at Home: Helping Elderly People". Copies were sent to Portsmouth city council as well as to the health authorities. The report examines in detail alternatives to sheltered housing or institutional care which enable the more dependent elderly to remain in their own homes. That is what many old people wish to do. Alarm and care schemes are often cheaper than sheltered housing.

Dealing with defective housing stock, we recognise the city council's concern about the Orlit and Reema properties that have been designated under the Housing Defects Act. We took that into account in deciding the HIP allocation. While it is for local authorities to decide their expenditure priorities and ensure that their statutory obligations are met, this year a new indicator was introduced within the generalised needs index that is intended to reflect the need for expenditure on prefabricated reinforced concrete houses. That increases the generalised needs index score of authorities with large numbers of PRC dwellings in their areas. We have also given greater weight within the index to disrepair in the public sector stock.

We have tried to help Portsmouth through the urban programme. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that we have today decided to approve a scheme for the Hertford street play area — I hope it is in the hon. Gentleman's constituency—for £35,000 capital expenditure to enable the local authority to upgrade the play area by providing a range of play facilities together with associated landscaping and environmental improvements.

We have also decided to help the Beneficial Foundation Resource Centre, which encourages the provision of opportunities for work, work experience and training for the unemployed. Although the project is time-expired, and normally we would look to Portsmouth to pick it up, the level of unemployment in Portsmouth is such that it has been given a two-year phased extension.

I noted what the hon. Gentleman said about some of the other problems. I was disturbed to learn that there are still families living at the top of tower blocks. There is general agreement that that is not the best place for families with children to live. I hope that Portsmouth will take steps to rehouse those families in suitable accommodation.

On the question of renovating stock, Portsmouth is undertaking a large modernisation programme with a spend of £6.5 million in 1983–84 and a projected £7.3 million in 1984–85. The council will continue to concentrate its efforts on that programme in the coming year.

As time has run out I cannot deal with the other issues, but I undertake to take a personal interest in the allocation of HIP resources to Portsmouth for next year in the light of what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Three o'clock.