Matthew Pennycook MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  It absolutely will. I will detail some of the other changes that we are making to ensure that the Bill achieves our objectives. Having listened to the concerns raised by numerous stakeholders, the views expressed on Second Reading and in Committee, and the representatives made to me by individual hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Darlington (Lola McEvoy), for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) and for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), we have tabled new clauses 13 and 14. New clause 14 would limit the amount of rent that a landlord can require to a maximum of one month. It would prevent unscrupulous landlords from using rent in advance to either set tenants against each other in de facto bidding wars or to exclude all together certain types of renters who are otherwise perfectly able to afford the monthly rent on a property. It does so by amending schedule 1 to the Tenant Fees Act 2019 so that any payment of rent made before a tenancy agreement is signed will be a prohibited payment. If a landlord or letting agent invites, encourages or accepts such a payment, they could face local authority enforcement action and a fine of up to £5,000. New clause 13 would amend the Housing Act 1988 to ensure that tenants continue to be protected from unreasonable requests for rent to be paid early once a tenancy has commenced. Landlords will no longer be able to include any terms in the tenancy agreement that have the effect of requiring rent to be paid prior to the rent due date. Tenants will retain the flexibility to make payments of rent in advance within a tenancy agreement should they wish to do so. The effect of the new clauses will be that tenants can be certain that the financial outlay to secure a tenancy will not exceed the cost of a tenancy deposit and the first month’s rent, and that they will not be required to pay their rent earlier than agreed. The new clauses will thereby reduce the barriers that stop tenants moving from substandard or insecure housing, and I commend them to the House. Hon. Members with large student populations in their constituencies will know that the dynamics of the general student rental market in many parts of the country see students compelled to make important decisions about accommodation long before they have formed stable friendship groups, or have had time to properly judge a property’s condition or location, and to consequently pay substantial deposits at a point in time when they are already coping with significant additional costs. This arms race, in which students are pressured ever earlier in the year to enter into contracts for the subsequent academic year, clearly is not benefiting them, and it is arguable whether it benefits the student landlords engaged in it. The Government have therefore tabled amendments 18 and 53, which will prevent the use of possession ground 4A in instances where a student tenancy was agreed more than six months in advance of the date of occupation, thereby helping to reduce the prevalence of the practice. I want to be clear that the amendment will not lead to an outright ban on contracts being agreed more than six months in advance. Instead, making the use of ground 4A conditional on not doing so will act as a strong disincentive against landlords who wish to use it to pressure students into early sign-ups, as many do now. I thank all those who have advocated for this change, including the former Member for Sheffield Central, Paul Blomfield, during his time in Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley, and organisations such as Unipol. Having taken up the cause of a family in her constituency who were forced by a letting agent to continue to pay as guarantors for a property that had been rented by their son before he tragically took his own life, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) has been campaigning for many years to protect bereaved families by prohibiting the practice. I pay tribute to her for her tireless efforts to secure a change in this area. She was unable to persuade the previous Government to make the necessary changes to the Renters (Reform) Bill, but this Government are determined to act to end the abhorrent practice where guarantors are held liable for unpaid rent owed solely as a result of the death of a tenant who is a family member. We have tabled new clause 15, which will limit the liability of a guarantor of a tenancy agreement for rent in circumstances where a tenant has died. I should make it clear that if in a joint tenancy the guarantor is not a family member, their liability for rent will be maintained. We consider that fair because we do not think it is reasonable to remove the guarantor’s liability and therefore expose a landlord to additional financial risk where the guarantor is not related to the deceased. Our new clause strikes the right balance: guarantors will be protected from being held liable for rent when they are grieving; landlords will be able to reclaim costs owed prior to a tenant’s death; and guarantor’s liability for other costs incurred under the tenancy will not be affected. I turn to amendments 40 and 41, which will amend existing powers to charge fees for the private rented sector database. The amendments will expand the definition of relevant costs that can be considered when calculating such fees and would enable fee revenue to include PRS enforcement costs incurred by local housing authorities. Hon. Members should be assured that database fees will be calculated and agreed at a later date, with further details set out in secondary legislation and developed on the basis that fees must be reasonable and proportionate. The amendments do not alter that position. In setting the fees, a range of factors will be considered, including the costs incurred by landlords. However, we need to ensure that when calculating fees, we can take into account all relevant costs, and the amendments will ensure that that is the case. Enabling fee revenue to include PRS enforcement costs is also important. For the reforms to have the impact we all want, effective enforcement will be crucial, and that point was debated at length in Committee. As we have touched on frequently throughout our consideration of the Bill, local housing authority capacity and resourcing is a real problem. The amendments provide an additional lever to help ensure that every local housing authority has the tools and resources it needs to carry out its enforcement role, so that good tenants and landlords benefit from a well-regulated and enforced PRS. Amendments 35 to 39 will expand the scope of what can be covered by the compulsory fee that private landlords will be required to pay to fund the new PRS landlord ombudsman. They will ensure that the fee can cover the set-up costs of the ombudsman and activities specified in the regulations beyond those strictly necessary for mandatory aspects of landlord redress. That will allow the ombudsman to set up the core redress service and to provide additional member benefits, such as landlord-initiated mediation or voluntary member redress, without the costs having to be borne by the taxpayer. I turn to amendments 42 to 52. Rent repayment orders are an important and effective tenant-led enforcement tool. They deter landlords from non-compliance and empower tenants to take action against unscrupulous landlords. The Bill will significantly strengthen rent repayment orders, including their extension to superior landlords in rent-to-rent arrangements. But we intend to go further and ensure that those sorts of arrangements cannot be used to evade responsibility and escape enforcement action. We are also making it clear that tenants and local authorities can seek a rent repayment order against any landlord in the chain, regardless of who they paid the rent to. Amendments 24 and 26 will limit the circumstances in which landlords can use ground 7 to obtain possession from a person who has inherited a tenancy following the death of a tenant. They will provide greater security for bereaved tenants by preventing them from losing their home, and I acknowledge the role that Marie Curie has played in advocating for change in respect of the matter. Landlords will still be able to use ground 7 if the original tenant had inherited it by will or intestacy, or if the inheriting individual did not live in the property before the tenant passed away. Landlords will also be able to use ground 7 for specialist tenancies, such as supported and temporary accommodation. That is in recognition of the critical role such tenancies play in supplying housing to those with specialist needs. Private registered providers are currently restricted from using the possession ground for redevelopment—ground 6—apart from where they have a superior landlord who wants to redevelop the property. Other possession grounds, such as the suitable alternative accommodation ground—ground 9—can be used to move tenants, but only if clear conditions are met. Although we expect PRPs to work closely with tenants to facilitate moves to enable redevelopment work, the Government accept that in limited cases it is increasingly hard to meet those conditions, preventing PRPs from progressing with crucial redevelopment work. I thank the National Housing Federation for raising concerns about that matter with me.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I will, happily, and then I will make some progress.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee is absolutely right and, as I will detail, that is precisely why the Government are moving to prohibit that practice. As she will know, the Government have already moved to ban bidding wars through the Bill, where desperate tenants are often pitted against each other so that a landlord can extract the highest possible rental payment. Demands for large rent-in-advance payments—in many parts of the country, they can be six, nine or even 12 months’ rent in advance—can have a similar effect, with tenants encouraged to offer ever larger sums up front to outdo the competition and secure a home that may or may not be of a good standard, or risk being locked out of renting altogether. As I stated previously, the interaction of the new rent periods in clause 1, which cannot be longer than a month, and the existing provisions of the Tenant Fees Act 2019 related to prohibited payments, arguably provide a measure of protection against requests for large amounts of advance rent. As I made clear in Committee, however, there is a strong case for putting the matter beyond doubt, and that is what we intend to do.

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her question and I agree with the objective that she has in mind, but, as we discussed fairly extensively in Committee, we do not think that the Renters’ Rights Bill and the way that the decent homes standard will apply to assured tenancies in this sector is right for MOD accommodation. The MOD is undertaking its own review, and I shall touch on that issue later in the debate. As I was saying, the changes around the decent homes standard will guarantee that the appropriate person can always be subject to enforcement action and they close a potential gap that may have been exploited by clarifying the types of accommodation that will be required to meet the standard. Today, we are proposing a small number of further improvements, most of which are again minor and technical in nature. As I have made clear repeatedly, the Government have long recognised that demands for extortionate amounts of rent in advance put undue financial strain on tenants and can exclude certain groups from renting altogether. I am sure that many of us in the Chamber will have heard powerful stories from our constituents about the impact of such demands. The typical story is all too familiar. Tenants find and view a property which, as advertised, matches their budget only to find that, on application, they are suddenly asked to pay several months’ rent up front to secure it. Tenants in such circumstances often confront an almost impossible choice: do they find a way to make a large rent-in-advance payment, thereby stretching their finances to breaking point, or do they walk away and risk homelessness if they are unable to find an alternative?

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I have a lot of time for the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that sort of hyperbole is beneath him, if I may say so. We are not absolving the Mayor of London of his responsibilities. The previous Government put in place a system whereby the arbitrary 35% urban uplift applied not merely to the core of a city region—as it does in every other part of the country—but to every London borough. That produced a fantastical figure that was completely divorced from reality. We have abolished that urban uplift and reset the standard method. That still leaves London with an incredibly stretching target of 88,000 homes per year, which is more than double recent delivery. We want to work in partnership with the Mayor of London, but we will be pushing him to increase his ambition for what can be achieved in London, and his delivery. We place great importance on agricultural land and food production. The national planning policy framework remains clear that where significant development of agricultural land is demonstrated to be necessary, areas of poorer-quality land should be preferred to those of higher quality. Those protections remain in the framework.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To be clear, the reforms to the planning system that we are making today are not the only part of the answer; delivery of homes is an entirely different challenge from bringing forward planning permissions. We need to over-supply planning permissions into the system to get the number of homes we need in his constituency, and across the rest of the country.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  As I have said, we are giving a considerable amount of thought to what more we can do, in addition to the changes being made today, to ensure that the right infrastructure comes forward. I am happy to give the right hon. Gentleman’s point serious consideration.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  As I made clear in my response to the shadow Minister, our approach to agricultural land remains the same. Ours is a brownfield-first approach. We want to maximise delivery on brownfield first, wherever possible. Only when that type of delivery cannot come forward—where brownfield sites cannot be densified, or where cross-boundary strategic co-operation of the kind we intend to introduce is not possible—will we ask local authorities to review their green belt, with a view to identifying and releasing the lowest-quality, most poorly performing land within it.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend may know, the new method produces a figure for London of nearly 88,000. That is more than double recent delivery, and it constitutes the biggest proposed percentage increase against delivery in any region in the country by a significant margin. We expect London to step up and improve its housing delivery record. As for my hon. Friend’s specific question, it will be for London and the Mayor to consider how the aggregate local housing numbers are distributed across the whole of London. Because there is a spatial plan in the form of the London plan, the targets for individual London boroughs need to be viewed in that context. The same cannot be said for other parts of the country.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  In the formal Government response to the consultation, which will be published at the end of this statement, we set out very clearly how we are dealing with local authorities at an advanced stage of plan preparation—both those that will meet the regulation 19 stage requirement and those that will not —and how we will help those with up-to-date plans to top up their housing supply so that they come closer to the new standard method. I share my hon. Friend’s wish that her local authority takes steps to close the gap.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for those questions and for her broad support for the framework we have announced today. On social rented housing in particular, she is absolutely right. The previous Conservative Government’s record on social rented homes is absolutely dire. The figures speak for themselves. Not only did they fail to deliver new social affordable homes beyond anything more than 10,000 units a year, but they engineered the decline of social housing and ran down our stock through various interventions, including the slashing of affordable homes programme funding and increased generosity in the right- to-buy discounts, which my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister did not benefit from. We have returned the discount to the rate at which she accessed housing. The Conservatives’ record on social rented housing speaks for itself. On future investment in affordable housing and social rented homes, as I have said, we will set out details in the multi-year spending review next year. We want to prioritise the delivery of social rented homes given the important role they play in addressing the housing crisis, and in resolving the particularly acute end of that crisis in the form of temporary accommodation. On the NPPF more widely, I can give my hon. Friend those assurances. The targeted changes to the framework we have made today will support the delivery of infra- structure. As I have already said, when it comes to the release of green-belt land, our golden rules will ensure that we get a higher proportion of affordable housing, and also infrastructure and amenities and access to green space through that additional public benefit.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  That question sits slightly outside the framework, although, as I said, there are targeted changes to support the delivery of new affordable homes. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have to do more about the decency of the existing social housing stock. We will be consulting on a new decent homes standard in the new year, as well as introducing Awaab’s law to clamp down on the most severe hazards.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Gentleman slightly misunderstands the situation for urban authorities. The housing targets are going up across metro areas.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I gently say to the hon. Lady that the expectation of having an up-to-date local plan in place is nothing new. Authorities have known for some time that they should be doing that. It was a failure of the previous Government that they did not use the powers at their disposal to ensure there was more up-to-date local plan coverage. Those areas that do not have up-to-date local plans in place will be vulnerable to development taking place outside the plan process, but we are committed to supporting those who share our ambition and are working in good faith to get a plan in place to be able to do so.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right that the situation we are in, with an acute and entrenched housing crisis and an ailing planning system, is not just blighting lives but holding back our economy and the way our great towns and cities can maximise their potential. This is a growth-focused national planning policy framework, and we are very proud of it.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman raises a very important point. There are local authorities around the country where the boundaries are such that they stray into areas where environmental protections are in place, such as national parks and other things. Local areas will need to engage with the mandatory higher housing targets that we are bringing forward when coming up with local plans. Those local plans will be tested by the Planning Inspectorate to see whether there are hard constraints of the type he speaks to and therefore whether a plan is sound on that basis. Hard constraints will still be taken into account in the development and examination of local plans.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman’s request has been put on the record and I will make sure that my ministerial colleagues are made aware of it.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I am not sure I detected a question there, but there were several points. I will endeavour to respond to at least a few of them. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s broad support for the framework and, in particular, for renewable energy deployment. On the charge that we are bypassing local democracy and local communities, I refute that entirely. We are encouraging, in the way that the previous Government did, the adoption of up-to-date local plans that are the best means of shaping development in any particular part of the country. That is where local people and communities can get involved to determine what development looks like and where it goes, but it must be a conversation about what development looks like and where it goes, rather than whether it happens at all. Under the current system, as a result of the NPPF changes in December 2023 and the fact that we have less than a third up-to-date plan coverage, there is too much speculative development outside of plans, which communities are rightly taking issue with. On social rented homes, as I have said to the hon. Gentleman previously, until he comes up with a less vague way of funding 150,000 social rented homes, we simply cannot take the point seriously. The Liberal Democrats got away with having no housing spending totals in their election manifesto. I applaud the ambition, but we take a more realistic path to boosting social and affordable homes, putting forward only what we know we can deliver within the spending constraints that we face. Lastly, I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to reform how CPO works. We are taking forward the discretionary power to disapply hope value that the previous Government took through—I commend them for doing that in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023. We need that power tested, but we need to go further and we intend to do so in the forthcoming planning and infrastructure Bill.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I support that objective, but I gently say that the previous Government had 14 years to address concerns in this area. I remember repeated calls from Conservative Members at the time that the previous Government should get serious about this. We will. There are measures in the framework that support infrastructure delivery, but there is more work to do.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  Where appropriate, local councillors, with advice from trained planning officers, should of course have a say on major outline applications. Some of the proposals we are asking for views on—we are asking for nothing more than views at an early stage, on a working paper—are about ensuring we get planning officers taking the right decisions using their expertise, with members focused on the largest and most controversial developments. I do not know if the hon. Gentleman has ever sat on a planning committee, but can he say, hand on heart, that every reserved matters application, as technical as some of them can be, should come to full planning committee? We think there are ways to streamline the system that do not involve the removal of local control and that adhere to the plan-led system philosophy that we are taking forward and value very much.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that we have added text to the NPPF to encourage the incorporation of features to protect threatened species, including swifts, but also bats and hedgehogs. We will consult on the NDMPs in the spring of next year.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  The previous Government, as the hon. Gentleman may know—again, I commend them for it—appointed an older people’s housing taskforce “to look at options for the provision of greater choice, quality and security of housing for older people.” That taskforce recently published its report, with a series of recommendations that we are engaging with. However, we need to give serious consideration as to how the planning system evolves to take into account demographic changes that we know we need to adapt to.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  There is more to be done in this area, and SMEs and small sites can make a huge contribution to the 1.5 million home target. There are changes that have been published today in the framework that will help SME builders, not least the focus on mixed- tenure sites that we know build out faster and where SMEs can play a big role going forward.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Contrary to the crowing by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) about the Opposition’s record on home ownership, the rates are stagnant and they are particularly bad for the younger generation. We have a generation locked out of home ownership. We are taking action in that area, not least through our plans to take forward a comprehensive and permanent mortgage guarantee scheme. One of the largest contributory factors, although not the only one, at the heart of why housing is unaffordable, is our failure over many decades to build enough homes of all tenures. Going forward, the framework will support our target of 1.5 million new homes.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Building Homes · Hansard source

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  I am afraid that I cannot give either, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will add the invitation to the list of requests for visits that I receive from Members across the House. However, I commend the hon. Lady’s local authority for its focus on quality and good design. We want to see more of that across the country.