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Housing Waiting Lists

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I was going to mention that later. Local authorities have an important role to play, not only as the providers of rented homes—which I hope they will become—but as the strategic housing authority for their area, to ensure that there is a proper match between the demands of families, in particular, for homes and the supply of homes across a range of different tenures and provision. The immediate crisis facing us all—and facing the Government in particular—is that section 106 deals are not going to be done in the present climate. In many parts of the country, section 106 arrangements have been responsible for more than half the social rented homes that have been built, but housing associations can no longer get the necessary private funding or the cross-subsidies from selling houses to provide rented homes. There is encouragement for local authorities to develop housing companies to enable them to build homes, but those companies are not going to get off the ground in the current climate because they, too, will have to rely on an element of private sector cross-subsidy to make the social rented homes affordable that the local authorities want to build. The reality is that if housing associations are going to build homes, they are going to need much higher levels of social housing grant. If the level of the grant remains at that indicated by the Government, fewer homes will be built by the housing associations as a result. I certainly welcome the Government's bringing forward finance to enable homes to be built more quickly, to address the immediate problems, but the solution is not just about bringing money forward; it is about increasing the amount of money available, in this spending review and the next. Even increasing the amount in this spending review would probably not lead to any more homes being built, because of the need for higher amounts of social housing grant for each unit of accommodation provided. In principle, I welcome the Government's commitment to allowing local authorities to build. Sir Bob Kerslake, chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency, was here the other day talking to the all-party parliamentary group on local government. I think he would accept that, if local authorities are going to build in the current circumstances, they will need Government support—which I think they are going to get, at least in principle—and, to quite a large extent, social housing grant from the Homes and Communities Agency. Also, local authorities are going to have to put in their own land for free to make these schemes work. I hope that the Government will make that clear and encourage them to do that. In the present circumstances, there could be no better use for local authority land than making it available for building social rented homes. These schemes will simply not stack up unless the local authorities are prepared to make that commitment, so I hope the Minister will encourage them to do so. I welcome the steps that the Government have taken to provide £200 million of resources—although more might need to be provided now—to buy up empty homes in the private sector. We must be cautious, however, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) said, there are many empty private flats that cannot be let or sold at the moment, and they are not necessarily the right properties for the social sector to buy. We need to concentrate on family homes. There are some interesting statistics available. Some local authorities are working with the housing associations to target that kind of property, but it is a great shame that the Lib Dem Sheffield city council has managed to buy two flats so far, and not one family home, with the money that the Government have made available. It should be ashamed of that. It is also important for local authorities to adopt a collective strategy across their areas, to ensure that all the Government's initiatives are made available to local people. The other day, one of my constituents went to see a representative of Sheffield city council. They were having desperate problems with their mortgage, and had been made aware of the Government's excellent scheme that will, in some circumstances, allow people to convert their mortgage into rent. The answer that they got back from the city council was, ““We know nothing about this scheme, and we haven't got any money.”” Lib Dem Sheffield city council should ensure that it is at least able to offer advice to people and point them in the right direction so that they can get access to this excellent scheme that the Government have promoted.