Marie Tidball MP urges Government to ensure local authorities can act to prevent poor social housing repairs

In Parliament, Marie Tidball MP asked the Government how it plans to empower local authorities to ensure contractors deliver social house building and repairs to a high standard and without delay. 

Marie highlighted constituents in High Green who were informed that the social housing repair project to their homes would take 12 weeks, but the project has overrun by over a year, entering its 64th week. Dr Tidball branded the state of the property as left by the contractors as “disgraceful”.  

In response to Marie’s question, the Minister of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government, Matthew Pennycook MP, agreed that “all social housing tenants deserve to live in decent homes, to be treated with fairness and respect, and to have their problems quickly resolved”, and highlighted the duty on housing associations and councils to provide an “effective, efficient and timely repair service to their homes, including setting timetables for completion, and clearly communicate this to residents” under the Regulator of Social Housing, Safety and Quality Standard. 

The Minister also reaffirmed the Labour Government’s plans to drive up the quality of housing, including the introduction of timescales within which landlords must make homes safe from serious hazards via Awaab’s Law, and a review of the Decent Homes Standard, together providing for a minimum quality that social housing must meet. This comes alongside a recent announcement of an extra £350,000 of homelessness funding for Sheffield. 

Speaking after the exchange, Marie Tidball MP, Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge, said: 

“Everyone deserves to have access to a safe and secure home. Local authorities need to have the right powers to ensure that contractors are being held to a high standard when carrying out repair work on social housing, so that cases like that of my constituents in High Green are not repeated. “I welcome the Government’s commitments to holding contractors to account so that the people across our communities in Penistone and Stocksbridge have access to the quality of housing that they deserve. “I will continue to work with Sheffield City Council to intervene with the contractor and make sure these repair works for my constituents are completed without more needless disruption or impact on their health and wellbeing.”