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Poorly performing landlords should not be able to operate in the sector, Labour and Co-op MP says
Social landlords that are not doing a good job should be “out”, the Labour and Co-operative MP for Brighton, Kemptown and Peacehaven has told Housing Brighton 2024.
During a session on politics at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) conference, Lloyd Russell-Moyle said: “If you’re not doing a good enough job, you should be out and I’m afraid many social landlords are not doing a very good job and they should be out.”
He said there is “a bit of a problem with quality” in the social housing sector “although it’s much less of a problem than we see in the private rented sector”.
“But it is not to be forgotten and I do think there are some serious discussions that we need to talk about how we enfranchise and empower residents, tenants, to be able to leverage themselves better,” he said.
Mr Russell-Moyle said he thinks “we should be talking about allowing residents in social housing to request that their stock be transferred to a different social housing provider”.
He did not elaborate on how the idea would work.
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Mr Russell-Moyle continued: “And we should see a reduction in social landlords in the sector if they can’t keep up. And that means quality, but it also means things like service charges, dodgy practices all over the place. I could give you a list as long as my arm of casework that comes in, charging that’s not accurate, judgements not fair, lies that are told, poor quality, leaks etc.
“And social housing people who will refuse to speak to you until you take it to the ombudsman or the lawyers.”
Earlier, Mr Russell-Moyle heavily criticised the private rented sector, describing it as like the “wild west”. The reality is, the private rented sector is too big, it needs to shrink. Which is the opposite of what the Conservatives will tell you.”
He added: “The private sector at the moment has become the complete wild west and for large numbers of people, the private rented sector is not a place where they would ever want to end up. It is the place of their nightmares.”
Mr Russell-Moyle said that “we need to find a way of shifting that stock to the social housing sector” through social landlords acquiring properties.
He said: “The problem is how do you finance that. And clearly there needs to be some sort of offer. I think that what we need to do… is around how we deal with capital gains.
“The problem is large numbers of people who invested in property to secure their pension, to secure their social means later on. How do we allow them to exit the housing market with dignity? How do we allow them to exit the housing market whilst keeping some asset value?”
Mr Russell-Moyle suggested offering a transfer into government gilts that last 10 years. “I think Labour is quite soft on how we do that,” he said.
Earlier in the session he said there are two issues that need to be tackled: the number of homes and the tenure of those homes. He also referred to Natalie Elphicke defecting from the Conservative Party to Labour.
“Natalie Elphicke, who I work with a lot, is on the far right of the Conservative Party on everything else apart from housing, where she’s almost on the left of the Labour Party.”
Mr Russell-Moyle, who is a member of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, said: “So it’s an interesting time in politics – and housing… is the area where you see people who we don’t share Labour politics with coming over because there is an understanding that we’ve got ourselves in a real pickle, a real mess with housing in this country.”
Later in the session he said that Labour wants to see 50% social housing on ‘grey belt’ land, sites on the green belt that are on brownfield rather than greenfield land.
He also said “we need to talk about the borrowing limit” and the grant for social housing.
But he warned that it will be very difficult to get money out of a Labour administration for the first few years if the party gets into power.
“My impression is in the first few years of a Labour government, I’m afraid things will be tight, it will be like squeezing blood out of a rock in terms of getting money.”
He said that ideas “where we can build without a huge cash injection or where we can find ways of asset stock transfer” are “probably the ways that we will need to further this conversation”.
When asked about whether powers around housing should be more localised, and less top-down, he said if you leave it to local MPs and local councils, “you’d almost get nothing done – it’s the nimby reaction. We will need stronger targets.”
He also said the problem with regional government is that there is “no accountability”.
“Combined authorities are total bureaucratic monsters. They’re not anything anyone wanted, not anything anyone asked for,” he said, adding except when there is an elected mayor.
