Local Authority Prefabricated Houses: Repairs (Hansard, 28 November 1983)

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, my right honourable friend announced last Thursday that provision for housing investment by local authorities in England in 1984–85 will be £2,522 million. Authorities were also 439 notified on the same day of their individual housing investment programme allocations. Particular account was taken in determining those allocations of the need for repairs to defective systems-built dwellings. It is for authorities themselves to decide how much of their total available resources, including capital receipts, to devote to those repairs.

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the dismay that will be felt by local authorities in response to that Answer? The Question of course was superseded and somewhat dismissed from this Order Paper by the fact that the Secretary of State himself a fortnight ago announced a reduction in the housing investment programme. How does the Minister advise local authorities to deal with this problem when it has now become an accepted fact that the industrialised and semi-industrialised houses built since 1960 are the most urgent problem that they have to deal with? Where are they going to get the finance from based on a housing investment programme which has now been reduced in real terms?

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, first of all local authorities have to identify the need, which it is my understanding they have not yet done. Specifically, the noble Lord's Question refers to prefabricated reinforced concrete houses. As authorities have not yet assessed the need for early expenditure, or indeed exactly discovered how great is the problem in their particular area, it is at the earliest a matter for 1985–86 rather than for 1984–85. So far as the reduction in the HIP is concerned there is quite a lot of unallocated expenditure from previous years in the system. I suggest to the noble Lord that one should not look at the direct Government grant but the total amount available for spending to local authorities, which brings the figure up to £3.7 billion.

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, the Minister must be aware that there have been by some local authorities specific identifications—

Noble Lords
Question!

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
—of this particular problem. May I ask the Minister what he is prepared to do for authorities who have had to take decisions to demolish properties that have been built less than 15years? They have been identified and demolished. What are the Government going to do about it?

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, if a house, a building, or whatever is unsafe to live in and cannot be reasonably repaired, then obviously the only course is to demolish it. However, on the more general point, the needs for repair were borne in mind throughout our discussions of the provision which should be made for housing public expenditure. But the problem should not be exaggerated either in scale or by suggesting that defects which will not arise for many years must be dealt with immediately at the cost of vast sums of money.

§ Baroness Birk
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the under spending to which he refers has been practically eliminated and that there is a great prospect 440 of an overspend next year? Is he also aware that when he is answering in this way what he is saying is that the Government are quite prepared to let the deterioration of our housing stock continue in the area where it is getting worse and worse? If he had looked at any of the regional papers over the past few weeks, would he not have noticed that one after the other has pointed to the need for their local authorities—and is he aware that this applies to both Conservative and Labour authorities—to press the Government for grants to deal with the particular type of houses referred to by my noble friend? So far the answer has been no.

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, on the quality of housing stock generally, I have no doubt that we shall discuss this matter at great length on Wednesday when we debate the Motion of the noble Baroness's noble friend Lord Pitt. But so far as the non-traditional houses are concerned, the Government are looking at the totality of the money that local authorities have to spend for this coming year, as I understand it, without, whatever the noble Lord, Lord Dean of Beswick, may say, the full determination of the scale of the problem. There is enough money to cope with the problem.

§ Lord Dean of Beswick
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that one particular block of flats in Leeds has had to be demolished because of structural deterioration, and that it is unacceptable socially? Is the noble Lord further aware that the demolition of that block of flats will place on every council house in Leeds a 22p increase in rent a week for the next 40 years? Does the noble Lord think that fair and equitable treatment of the other council house tenants in Leeds who will have to pay for it?

§ Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, before I could answer that question I should be extremely interested to know, first, how many accumulated capital receipts there are in the Leeds housing budget; and, secondly, how many council houses they have sold recently.