Clause 67 - Designation of selective licensing areas
Housing Bill
11:15 am
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
I was just asking my right hon. Friend which bit of the Bill he is pointing at.
The hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire raises an important point. Antisocial behaviour is not restricted to one type of tenure. The purpose of the Bill is to fill what has been called a gaping hole in the current framework of arrangements for helping landlords to address antisocial behaviour. It does not apply to RSLs because, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton said, there is already a mechanism for regulating them and for giving them powers and responsibilities to address antisocial behaviour. Their powers to deal with antisocial behaviour were recently increased as a result of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. Concerns about their responses or about their failure to recognise their responsibilities should and can be taken up with the Housing Corporation and the housing ombudsman.
I urge the hon. Member for South-West Bedfordshire to raise the matter with Ministers if he has concerns about the operation of the Housing Corporation or about the housing ombudsman's ability to deal with his case. I know that the Housing Corporation takes this issue seriously, and there is a great deal of excellent practice out there. It is an aspect of the Housing Corporation's responsibilities that it is keen to develop. It is, however, right that we deal with RSLs by using that mechanism rather than by attempting to add a regulatory structure through local authorities.
The Bill attempts to address the problem of private sector landlords who, until now, have simply been missing from the picture. Good private sector landlords may take their responsibilities seriously. Until now, however, no one could do anything about private sector landlords who did not. As the hon. Gentleman says, it is right that private sector landlords, who are making money out of their properties in a community, should recognise their responsibilities to the rest of that community just as everyone else does, whether they are the local authority, the RSL, tenants or local residents. This is not the right point at which to enter a debate about owner-occupiers: the problems associated with owner-occupiers are serious, but a debate about them goes beyond the scope of the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 67 ordered to stand part of the Bill.