HL Deb 08 April 1987 vol 486 cc1090-102

7.16 p.m.

Lord Ezra rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what progress has been made in the repair and renovation of the housing stock.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, there have been many debates on the subject of housing, and no doubt there will be many more. The most recent in this House was introduced by my noble friend Lord Winstanley on 10th December 1986 and dealt with the economic and social implications of the housing situation. In another place there was a debate on 10th February of this year introduced by Dr. John Cunningham on housing and homelessness. These previous debates—two of a large number—illustrate the wide-ranging nature of the housing problem. The Question posed tonight concentrates on the physical condition of the housing stock.

I regret that more noble Lords have not been able to participate in discussing this vital issue, no doubt because of the lateness of the hour, although I believe that one or two who are not down on the list may intervene later. I am indebted in any event to the noble Baroness, Lady David, for taking part and to the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, who will be replying on behalf of the Government.

The condition of housing in this country has been the subject of much inquiry, as we know. I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I just summarise what has emerged from the various reports because that sets the scene and shows the dimension of the problem. The most recent comprehensive report has been the English Housing Condition Survey published in 1981. We know that a further survey relating to 1986 is being compiled, and perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, will be able to tell us when that might appear so that we can be a bit more up to date in our information.

According to the 1981 survey, dwellings requiring repair work of £2,500 or more at the then value of the currency amounted to over 4 million of the housing stock in England, or 20 per cent. A very large proportion, therefore, of the total English housing stock required fairly major repair at that time.

More recently the 1985 Department of the Environment inquiry into the condition of the local authority housing stock in England estimated that 3.8 million, or 84 per cent., of all local authority dwellings needed repair and maintenance work at an average of nearly £5,000 per dwelling or, in total, £19 billion. That is a report issued in 1985, and purely for local authority housing in England.

Next we have the Audit Commission, which compiled a report dated April 1985 that estimated that the backlog of repairs and maintenance for local authority housing is growing at a rate of £900 million per annum. Finally, there are the estimates for the amount of repairs in the private sector. They have been estimated by the AMA to amount to £26 billion. If you add all this up on the basis of the most recent and most comprehensive inquiries, it comes to about £45 billion that is needed to put Britain's housing stock into reasonable repair.

Let us now see what is being done about this. I should like to say straight away that it would be quite wrong to claim that nothing is being done about it. A great deal is being done by the Government, by local authorities, by voluntary organisations and by partnerships of various sorts. The question is not whether anything is being done. It is being done. The question is whether in aggregate it is of sufficient size to enable us to see this problem being resolved in a measureable amount of time. That is the issue.

Let us look at some of the things that are being done. First, so far as I can gather from interpreting the figures, local authorities have at their disposal in the financial year 1987–88 a net £1.4 billion for home improvement and for housing generally after taking account of only 20 per cent. of the capital receipts on the sale of houses. I believe it is 15 per cent. in Wales and 20 per cent. in England. In addition to that, there are improvement grants. These were quite substantial in 1983–84 but subsequently have been very much reduced. There is a variable element here. They are at a relatively low level at the moment compared with where they were in 1984.

There are a number of partnership schemes. I should like to give the example of one in which I am involved known as the Neighbourhood Revitalisation Services Scheme, which was initiated by the National Home Improvement Council and has recently been supported quite substantially by the Government who put in £2 million to be matched by the private sector. This is to undertake approximately 25 schemes in areas where it is essential to get a modicum of improvement to housing in the locality to show what can be done on a partnership basis.

Next there is Neighbourhood Energy Action, another voluntary initiative in which I am also involved, which is currently insulating 300,000 homes a year for low income households, particularly for the elderly. We know the repeated sad statistics we have every winter; the problem of health for the elderly caused by extreme winter weather. I am glad to say that the Government announced this afternoon in answer to a Question in another place that it is their intention to continue to support this scheme and indeed to expand it. I am very glad to hear that, because it looks as though we might be able to build up the number to something like 500,000 per annum. But I should explain that our estimate is that there are something like 7 million households in this category to go for, so there is still a long way to go.

Finally, I should refer to the multiplicity of inner city initiatives. I shall not go into those in detail, but obviously they would have their impact one way or another on housing. So we have a variety of things being done. But the question is are they enough? Do they add up to enough, bearing in mind the enormous size of the problem in monetary terms—no less than £45 billion? It is difficult to reconcile the magnitude of the problem with putting together all the initiatives I have outlined. It may of course come to more than appears on the surface.

I should like to complete this brief review of the situation by making two proposals. The first is this. I think it is indeed unfortunate that we are so out of date with our statistics. That we should in 1987 be referring back to the 1981 survey strikes me as being quite wrong. I wonder therefore whether, because of the importance of the question of the state and the condition of housing, we could not have an annual trend survey. I am sure it would be in the interest of government to show what is being done. It would be in the interest of all of us to have more up-to-date statistics, and then we could debate the matter to see whether or not more should be done in one year. As it is, we have to put these figures together from a multiciplicity of sources, starting from different bases, and a lot of it is guesswork. That is my first suggestion.

My second suggestion arises from the first. I am wondering whether there ought to be an attempt at an overall strategy to see whether these various initiatives, all of which are perfectly reasonable and need to be encouraged, tot up to the sort of combined effort that is required. If they do not, what other initiatives should be taken? I make those two very simple suggestions in the light of the size of the problem we have. We are all pleased that certain initiatives are being taken, but we must remain concerned whether they will cope with this problem, even over a long time. Surely what we must aim for in this country is to have adequate standards of housing for the people who live here. In particular we must make sure that people can afford to heat their homes reasonably and to have them adequately insulated. I should have thought that that should be a prime objective of any government.

7.27 p.m.

Lord Pitt of Hampstead

My Lords, I must apologise for not putting my name down, but I am only too pleased to support the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, in this Unstarred Question. I am sure the House is grateful to him for having put it down. I shall confine myself to speaking about London because the lack of progress made under the present Government in the repair and renovation of the housing stock is highlighted by the latest Greater London House Condition Survey. Therefore I support the point that the noble Lord has just made about our having an annual survey so that we can see what is what.

The Greater London House Condition Survey, which was published last month by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, shows that as many as one in five homes in Greater London last year, 1986, lacked basic amenities, was unfit for habitation or required substantial renovation work. Despite a reduction since 1979–1 was glad the noble Lord admitted that—in the number of homes which are unfit or lack basic amenities, renovation work has barely kept pace with the deteriorating condition of London's housing. In fact the number of homes in London in serious disrepair has increased under the present Government and so has the outstanding repair bill.

The Government are reluctant to attempt any estimate of the level of investment required to maintain, let alone reverse, the rate of deterioration in the condition of the housing stock, because they wish to shift more responsibility on to individual owners to maintain their homes in good repair. In fact they are planning to restrict grant aid for the renovation of the private housing stock. This is quite a serious matter. The Government will not allow the owners of public sector properties—that is mainly the local authorities—to invest what they need to maintain their housing stock. This is part of the real problem; and owners in the private sector frequently cannot afford to invest what is necessary to repair or renovate their homes without grant-aid. And it is this grant-aid which the Government wish to restrict.

This is clearly borne out by the results of the Greater London House Condition Survey, because, unsurprisingly, it shows that the poorest—and by that I mean elderly people, families on low incomes and unskilled workers—are the most likely to live in properties which arc in poor condition and they are the least likely to he able to afford the necessary repairs. That is the problem and that is the dilemma.

Only a small proportion of households living in unsatisfactory accommodation in London would he able to pay for the necessary repair and renovation work out of their income or savings. The repair costs of over half London's households exceed those households' average income. According to the survey, only one-fifth of households whose repair costs are over £5,300 have savings of over £5,000. The other four-fifths do not have them.

The clear implication is that if local authorities are forced to restrict further the improvement grant-aid it will hasten the deterioration in the condition of the housing stock and will increase the link—it is a very important and very worrying link—between poverty and poor housing conditions. Therefore if the Government are concerned to make progress on the repair and renovation of the housing stock they must be prepared to lift borrowing restrictions to enable local authorities to provide more grant-aid. In this small intervention of mine, all I am asking is that the Minister should assure the House that the Government are willing to do that.

7.33 p.m.

Baroness David

My Lords, we are very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has asked this Question tonight. I suppose it would have been even more apt last week, which was National Housing Week; but we cannot always put Unstarred Questions when we want to. It is also very suitable that the noble Lord should be asking this Question, since he is president of the National Home Improvement Council, whose interesting report I received last Monday.

The noble Lord has described the scene extremely well. For our part, we fail totally to understand how the Government can sit by and watch the increasing dereliction and deterioration of the housing stock of this country. There is absolutely no doubt that the deterioration increases. The Government may be doing something, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, said, but they are not doing enough. Report after report has emphasised the appalling condition of the stock and the billions of pounds needed to stop the rot. But the Government fail to respond adequately and refuse even to allow local authorities to spend their own money, raised from council house sales. They are allowed to spend only 20 per cent. of that money each year.

It is small wonder that local authorities have some empty houses in their stock, because there is just not the money available to improve them. Even so, it is a fact that local authorities have a much smaller percentage of vacancies than either housing associations or the private sector—and government departments are the worst of all.

The 1981 House Condition Survey, as the noble Lord said, revealed that 4.3 million houses were either in such poor condition as to be unfit for human habitation or lacked basic amenities or required repairs costing £2,500 or more. The number of homes in serious disrepair had risen since 1976, when the previous survey took place, from 860,000 to 1,050,000. The Department of the Environment's own survey in 1985 revealed that public housing was in an advanced state of decay. That study estimated that over 3.8 million dwellings—84 per cent. of the stock—was considered to require expenditure totalling £18.84 billion at an average cost of £4,900 per dwelling. That is nearly double the cost per dwelling which was quoted in 1981.

As the noble Lord said, the Audit Commission, the Government's own watchdog, said that the backlog was growing at the rate of £900 million per annum. As an example, Birmingham will need 600 years at the present rate of progress to carry out the full modernisation of its traditional stock. It is interesting to note that despite £1,294 billion spent in urban aid since 1981—a figure the Minister may well quote in replying to this debate—the inner cities still present the most distressing examples of decline. One must remember, of course, the vast amount of rate support grant they have lost.

In February this year, as my noble friend Lord Pitt said, the AMA published the Greater London House Condition Survey, a London-wide survey of physical housing conditions, and a linked social survey. In addition, the boroughs of Barnet, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey and Islington had in-depth surveys carried out also covering physical and social conditions. Those who are interested in housing really should study them.

On the provisional results the report gave—I am referring to the Greater London report—it seems that there has been a significant reduction in the number of unfit properties and the number lacking the five basic amenities. But the main message is the very worrying trend of increasingly serious disrepair and the greater number of properties that will become unfit in the future. Both these trends, which are particularly prevalent in the private sector, demonstrate that the battle against unsatisfactory housing conditions must continue at an ever-increasing level if London's housing is to improve faster than it deteriorates. In fact, the forecast is very bad.

One of the most significant findings in the social survey is that the residents' perceptions of their own housing conditions are considerably more optimistic than those of qualified surveyors. A lot of people just do not realise how their health can be affected by damp, condensation, poor ventilation, and so on. Good insulation, which was again mentioned by the noble Lord and is most important for comfort, for energy conservation and saving people's fuel bills, is also not very often appreciated until it has been experienced.

On that subject, the cutting of the grant for home insulation so that it is available only to those on supplementary benefit seems to be one of the crazier economies this Government have made. Those on supplementary benefit may well find it difficult to find the percentage of the cost that they are being asked to pay. I ask the Minister what that percentage is to be, if it has been decided. Or have the Government seen the light and decided that they will not ask the recipients of supplementary benefit for any payment? If not, I suspect there is likely to be very little work done for the comfort of the poorest in our society or for the saving of their fuel costs.

The AMA has just finished its own update on the 1985 inquiry into the condition of local authority housing stock in England. The general point is that the housing stock in all tenures is deteriorating at a faster rate than it is being repaired or improved. The bill for local authority stock has gone up from £18.84 billion which was quoted in the 1985 inquiry, to between £21 billion and £22 billion; that is, up by £3 billion in a year. The results of the Greater London House Condition Survey, to which I have referred, confirm that the condition of the private sector stock, and the privately rented stock in particular, is worse than that of the public sector.

We expect this trend in London to be confirmed by the results of the 1986 English House Condition Survey, which I understand has now been completed by the DoE. I should like to ask the Minister whether this is so and, if so, will she tell us some of the provisional results of this survey when she replies and also when we can expect publication? I have given her warning of those questions.

I should also like to ask, as the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has, that the local authority stock condition survey should be revised and reviewed on a regular annual basis. Can the Minister give us any assurance that that will be done? As I have said, the AMA in its up-date asked its members to complete the Summary Form A giving, on exactly the same definitions as used in the 1985 return, an account of the local authority's revised estimate for repair and maintenance expenditure of the housing in its stock. If the AMA can manage this useful and informative exercise, surely the DoE can.

So what are the Government going to do about this housing crisis in our country? New house building starts have gone down from a total of 275,000 in 1975 to 168,000 in 1985. Grants paid to private owners and tenants, where the greatest problems are, peaked in 1984 to 229,000 but were down to 138,000 in 1985. Why? What is the estimated figure for 1986 and what are the intentions? I suggest that a review of the grant system is long overdue and an increase in resources to meet a rising repair bill is needed now more than ever.

The Minister may tell us that the local authority capital housing programme has gone up from £2.324 billion in 1985–86, to £2.532 billion in 1986–87, to £2.922 billion in 1987–88. But the HIP allocation—and that is what is particularly important in the light of the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra—has gone down from £1.65 billion in 1985–86, to £1.465 billion in 1986–87, to £1.366 billion in 1987–88—£300,000 down in the two years.

The important point—I have mentioned it before and I intend to mention it again—is that the Government hold back local authorities' accumulated receipts and will not let them spend 80 per cent. of them. That hold back has gone up in cash terms from £0.355 billion in 1985–86, to £0.78 billion in 1986–87, to £1.24 billion in 1987–88. It is absolute nonsense.

Can the Government change their dogmatic mind and let the authorities spend what is their money on retrieving the truly devastating situation of housing disrepair and housing shortage in our country? It is people who are suffering—from homelessness, from appalling and very costly bed and breakfast accommodation and from inadequate and ill-maintained homes. After all, a decent home is the most basic need and it is what hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens do not have. When will the Government accept this and do something constructive about it?

7.43 p.m.

Baroness Hooper

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has raised a matter of continuing and considerable importance, and I am most grateful to him for putting the Question so positively in asking, in effect, for a progress report on the repair and renovation of the housing stock. One of the vital things to remember about the housing stock is that it is constantly changing, changing in response to changes in demand, in living patterns and in expectations. All this is a perfectly healthy sign of a vigorous market.

Added to this is what we might call the "life-cycle" of each house or building. From the day that it is completed, a house is subject to a constant onslaught from the wind and the weather as well as from its occupants. This natural wear and tear means that the house and all its elements—bricks, mortar, tiles and slates—gradually deteriorate and without regular maintenance will eventually have to be replaced. We need to bear all these processes in mind when we come to look at the condition of the housing stock and the progress being made in its repair and renovation.

It seems to be fashionable at the moment to claim that the housing stock overall is getting worse, that more and more houses are falling into disrepair faster than ever before. Indeed those suggestions have been made again this evening. No doubt there are houses which are getting worse, just as there are houses which are being improved. But to understand the overall effect of all the changes taking place in the housing stock we need to compare its condition now with its condition in the past. This brings me to one of the reasons for carrying out the quinquennial English House Condition Survey to which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, drew our attention in his opening remarks.

The latest survey, which began last September, is three times as large as the previous survey in 1981. This will give us more accurate data than previous surveys on each separate region and on the local authority housing stock. The survey covers housing of all ages. The surveyors look at the extent of disrepair, fitness for human habitation and the presence or absence of basic amenities and other aspects of stock condition. The survey will measure condition on a comparable basis across the whole stock. In addition, because the 1986 survey has gone back and resurveyed the dwellings in the 1981 survey, we shall be able to make an assessment of the changes that have taken place during those five years.

The field work for the physical survey and the interviews have all been completed and the pilot stage of a supplementary survey collecting information from local authorities on their improvement activities is currently in progress. I believe that it was on this supplementary survey that the noble Baroness, Lady David, asked for some additional specific information. This supplementary survey of the local authority stock is planned for this summer to provide more detail on this sector, and analysis of the results is likely to take some time. So it will not be possible to publish a report on this before next year.

The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, suggested in this respect that not only should the Government commit themselves to a five-yearly survey but that more should be done to collect data in between. I believe that he called it an annual trend survey. We fully recognise the importance of collecting reliable, comprehensive data on house condition, and I can confirm that the Government will wish to continue to collect the information needed to help inform their decisions. But whether this will always and necessarily be in the present form of five-yearly surveys I cannot say.

But there is a problem in trying to collect information on house condition too frequently. Real changes in condition cannot reliably be measured at intervals of less than about five years, and if we conducted annual surveys, for example, it would be difficult to disentangle changes arising from variability between surveyors from those representing a real change in condition. We also have to recognise the considerable input of resources within the department needed to mount a survey of over 30,000 homes throughout England.

The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, referred to the Greater London House Condition Survey and the results published at the beginning of last month. The picture on this is not all gloom. There was a small increase in the number of homes in disrepair, which rose by 4 per cent., and there is no room for complacency. But there were, nevertheless, some encouraging results. Overall housing conditions in London were shown to improve between 1979 and 1985. There were substantial falls in the number of homes which were unfit for human habitation and the numbers which lacked basic amenities. They decreased by 41 per cent. and 57 per cent. respectively.

But of course action on the housing stock does not wait on survey results. As has been said, local authorities are spending over £2½ billion on the maintenance and renovation of their own stock. They are also spending over £500 million on the private stock through improvement grants and other forms of action, while owners themselves are spending far greater sums of around £10 billion on the repair, maintenance and improvement of their homes. An enormous amount is therefore being done, to which I shall now turn in a little more detail.

The public sector has a particular responsibility for its own stock. It is not only the owner, but also the landlord. Most of this stock has now been in use for 30 years or more. In many cases houses will have received little investment since they were built and in some cases it seems that properties have not even received adequate day-to-day maintenance. We have encouraged authorities to consider carefully the maintenance and renovation needs of their stock and to develop proper programmes for carrying out the work needed.

I know that many authorities are now carrying out systematic surveys of their own stock and considering their priorities for action. We are helping by publishing advice from the Building Research Establishment on ways of addressing some of the more difficult technical problems that authorities face, particularly with non-traditional forms of construction.

Our Estate Action Team is visiting authorities to discuss innovative approaches to tackling rundown and problem estates, involving new approaches to tenant consultation and management as well as investment in physical changes. We have increased the resources available to local authorities for investment in housing in two successive years and I am glad to say that over 50 per cent. of this investment now goes toward the renovation of authorities' own stock, compared with less than 30 per cent. in 1979. The Government believe that this proportion could increase still further.

The primary responsibility for private housing, on the other hand, rests with the owners. This is not our view alone. It is the view of all those who spend such large sums on their homes. Clearly, many houses which deteriorate over time or because they are neglected are rescued and repaired privately. Many first-time buyers, for example, will take on and do up a house which needs improvement and is therefore cheap. They can then sell on at a higher price. We can rely on the workings of the housing market to keep this cycle going.

But sometimes the cycle breaks down. The owner or occupier cannot afford the work that needs to be done. Then there is a role for grant aid. Since 1979, local authorities have given more than one million home improvement grants worth more than £3 billion. Levels of grant expenditure are no longer at the peak levels which prevailed at the time of the special arrangements for 1982–83 and 1983–84. But they are still at very high levels, with perhaps £400 million spent in this last year alone. Possibly that will go some way to reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, on that particular point.

In answer to the suggestions that all would be well if the Government made more money available, I must emphasise that we are already making more money available for investment. Gross provision for local authority investment in housing has been increased for the second successive year. But it is still essential that we control local authority spending as a whole, as it contributes directly to the PSBR. We estimate that more than half of authorities' housing spending this year will be funded from capital receipts. If we increased the prescribed proportion of capital receipts, less would be available for HIP allocations. That would simply result in a different distribution of spending powers within the given total. It would divert resources away from some of the areas most in need of investment. Over time, authorities may use 100 per cent. of their receipts; the prescribed proportion simply controls the rate at which receipts are used.

Whatever the level of local authority spending, we want to see it being targeted where it will do the most good—helping people who otherwise could not afford to help themselves. That is why my honourable friend the Minister for Housing announced that he intended to change the way the Home Insulation Scheme works. Making more grants mandatory will not help to increase the rate of repair and improvement if it means that more grant money is given to people who do not really need it, leaving less for those who do. That does not seem to be the right answer.

The noble Baroness, Lady David, raised a specific question on that point concerning the scheme announced by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction in December of last year. The scheme proposed that the general rate of grant of 66 per cent. should be withdrawn. However, it proposed that a 90 per cent. grant would be extended to all householders who are in receipt of housing benefit or supplementary benefit. He said at that time that the changes would be introduced next year. Therefore, the new scheme will be laid before Parliament in due course. The details of the administration of the materials payment are still being worked out in consultation with the MSC and NEA. We expect that the average householder will pay a contribution of about £5. NEA is considering how to help clients who are genuinely unable to afford even that small amount.

On the subject of home insulation and draught-proofing, I was happy that the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, felt able to give a welcome to the announcement by my honourable friend on draught-proofing which was made today in another place. We keep the home improvement grant system under review to see what can be done to make it responsive to problems which emerge. Your Lordships will recollect that we have taken power in the Housing and Planning Act 1986 to introduce a new type of grant to assist with works to the common parts—the roof and shared areas—of blocks of flats. In particular, long leaseholders can be faced with very heavy repair bills and we thought it right that they too should be able to get help.

Local authorities continue to take an active role in the renewal and regeneration of whole areas of rundown private housing. Concentrating grant and other resources, both public and private, in housing action areas and general improvement areas remains an effective way of targeting help to those who need it most. Apart from the higher levels of grant which are available, authorities have been able to benefit from the provisions we made in 1982 to encourage the coordinated repair of whole blocks of dwellings. More than 100 such "enveloping" schemes have now been approved, covering more than 10,000 dwellings in 14 authorities. Their impact locally has invariably been beneficial, and, when used sensibly with other powers, can help transform an area's prospects.

A new initiative on agency services, announced by my honourable friend the Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction in November last year, brings together several strands of improvement policy. Agency services are run by a range of public and private sector bodies and they offer help to people to recognise, carry out and finance works to their own home. Some deal mainly with grant-aided work; others go wider and arrange packages of loan finance; some concentrate on small-scale work, perhaps done by their own teams of workers. These organisations provide a valuable service to their clients. But they can also help local authorities to make the best use of their resources for private sector improvement. Agency services can sort out the most appropriate finance package for their clients, identify those in most need of grant and ensure that only reliable builders are used.

We wish to see an expansion of these services. To this end, we are to meet half the £6 million costs of establishing 50 new schemes over the next year or so in the private and voluntary sectors. Half of these schemes are to be set up by the National Home Improvement Council—of which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, is the distinguished president—as a further stage in the development of its neighbourhood revitalisation service initiative. I expect the first of these new schemes to be announced soon after Easter. A further 25 schemes will be helped through Care and Repair Ltd. These will concentrate especially on the needs of elderly people, enabling them to stay in their own homes in comfort and dignity. Funding for nine individual schemes has already been agreed, and a start made on the ground. And the Anchor Housing Trust will shortly announce plans for more of their successful Staying Put schemes. Clearly schemes of this sort are responding to a widespread need, and the Government expect the private sector, with some encouragement, to play their part.

I have tried to outline the many different ways in which the renovation of stock is being tackled. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, suggested that we needed an overall strategy for the future. We are giving further consideration to possible legislation in the light of comments received on our Green Paper. We remain committed to the idea of attracting more private finance into home improvement, making sure we get good value from it and to devising a grant system which is simpler and fairer and which targets help where it is most needed.

Some of the steps which we are now taking will help us to move in that direction. The results of the 1986 English House Condition Survey will provide us with more information to form the basis of our policies. Agency services are a good example of what we want to do. So too is the work being done by organisations such as the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to help owners ensure that the very large sums of private money being spent are used in the most sensible way.

A further step is to see that people choose and use reliable builders and contractors to carry out work. The Office of Fair Trading has already produced a booklet called Seven Golden Rules to help people select someone who will do a good job of work and give value for money, and the working party set up by my honourable friend to consider all aspects of small building work will be looking at what more can be done to curb the activities of so-called "cowboy" builders and improve the quality of work carried out.

We believe that there is still scope for increasing the amount of privately financed work. A survey undertaken last year for the Building Societies Association showed that two-thirds of improvement and repair works were paid for from savings and income. That may be a tribute to the thrift of home owners, but it also suggests that many people are not always aware that the resources locked up in their homes can be tapped to secure borrowing to do essential repair and improvement or simply to make the house a comfortable place to live, especially for an elderly person. The financial institutions have an important role to play in developing different loan packages to suit people's varying needs and circumstances. As well as the usual personal loans and mortgage advances, there has been growth of "maturity lending", which involves interest-only payments. I hope we shall see other types of loan which can help people on low incomes who nonetheless wish to use the equity available in their home.

What of the role of local authorities? For the public sector stock they will need to work increasingly in co-operation with the private sector and develop new approaches to the management of their estates. Sensitive locally-based management is needed if repair and improvement programmes are to be successful. This may mean devolving management to a tenant's co-operative or even to an outside organisation such as a housing association, provided of course that the tenants agree. Here again our Estate Action Team is offering ideas and advice. A number of schemes are already under way involving refurbishment of local authority housing by private firms for sale or for rent, or a mixture of the two.

For private sector housing, local authorities need to develop increasing contacts with the building societies and other financial institutions to promote privately financed renovation wherever this is appropriate. There will still he a role for traditional forms of public intervention, but this will be where it is clear that the private sector cannot cope unaided. There local authorities will need to plan and target their spending to make the maximum impact and to raise confidence in run-down areas so that private investment will return.

I have been rather lengthy in responding to the debate, but it will be clear from what I have said that much worthwhile work is being undertaken to maintain and enhance this country's housing stock. This can be successful only if it is based on co-operation: co-operation among central government and local government, the financial institutions, the construction industry and home owners. We shall continue to encourage all of these to play their part.