Localism Bill

The tenure standards will set that out, the housing strategy of the local housing authority will reinforce it and the tenancy policy of the provider, if it is not the housing authority itself, will also set it out. I want to make some progress and move on to a second issue that is, I know, of real concern to Members: the provisions on homelessness. Much of the debate on our homelessness proposals started off from the proposition that private rented landlords are a rogue sector and incapable of offering decent quality accommodation to those families who might benefit from it. I made it clear in Committee, as has my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government on a number of occasions, that the draft legislation includes a number of safeguards that together provide reassurances that an offer of private accommodation would be made only when it is reasonable to do so and when the accommodation is suitable for the needs of the household. It is important to go back to why we are making the changes in the first place. It is not because we want to make the plight of homeless families worse, but because we want to make their situation better. In London, the average stay in temporary accommodation of resettled homeless families before they get a permanent offer of social home accommodation is two years. The impact of that time on schooling, quality of life, health and stress is not acceptable and needs to be tackled. I agree with the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) that this probably is not a countrywide problem, and I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) does not have the problem because he has 2,500 empty houses to begin with, but in places of high housing stress it is a real problem. That is why we are making these proposals. In Committee and elsewhere, hon. Members have raised a number of concerns about the homelessness measures. Some of those focused on standards of accommodation in the private rented sector, the interplay that there might be with housing benefit changes and related issues of affordability. There were also concerns about the location of those private rented sector homes and whether there might be some loophole in creating intentional homelessness. I want to respond to each of those points in due course.