UK housing conditions among the worst in Western Europe

 A report being published today by the independent Pro-Housing Alliance maintains that housing conditions in the UK are among the worst in Western Europe and cost the nation about £7bn a year by adding to the pressure on the NHS and other public services.

The  Alliance, made up of a group of leading housing experts, sees housing fundamentally as a public health issue and is calling on the Government to adopt radical new measures to tackle the nation’s growing housing problems, which it claims are costing the country £7billion a year in costs to the NHS, social services and education.

 The Alliance claims a lack of affordable decent accommodation, cuts to local authority housing services, welfare reforms and overcrowding are combining to create stress and hardship for some of the most vulnerable people in the country who live in some of the  worst housing conditions in Western Europe.

The Alliance warns that  homelessness is on the rise and predicts the return of unscrupulous landlords like the infamous Peter Rachman, who exploited his London tenants in the 1950s and 1960s. Almost 4,000 people are sleeping rough on London's streets, an increase of 8 per cent since last year. About half of these are from the UK and the rest from a wide variety of other countries, notably Poland.

The report says there is little sign that the Mayor of London Boris Johnson's target of ending rough sleeping by next year will be met.

A report in yesterday's  Independent newspaper described a so-called "super-shed" in Newham, "a poorly constructed building not much larger than an average garden shed, is one of thousands of similar structures across the capital that housing campaigners label London's secret slums".

The Independent  report supports claims made by John McDonnell, Labour MP for Hayes and Harlington  in a Parliamentary debate earlier this year when he described a housing crisis in the London Borough of Hillingdon which has left families living in "developing world conditions". 

McDonnell was specifically critical of the London Borough of Hillingdon’s housing policies, such as using local estate agents to gain private sector rental accommodation for families. "We have discovered that the estate agents it has been using have often used these buy-to-let slum landlords," he said.

He also believes there is an "informal agreement" in place where estate agents will only seek properties for vulnerable families in the poorer south of the borough, rather than the richer north. This is creating "an apartheid regime," he warned.


He added: "This has resulted in families living in appalling conditions and overcrowding. Some families are living in almost developing world conditions because some of the properties are so poor."

Another concern in Hillingdon is a "planning free-for-all" whereby landlords are erecting "leisure rooms" in their gardens to be rented by families.

McDonnell said: "What is happening is that landlords are constructing these leisure rooms and getting families to live in what are, in effect, garages".

"In some instances we have discovered these places only when the family has turned up to register for council tax and we have found out that they are living in a shed or a garage."

 

According to Bill Rashleigh, a researcher from Shelter, the homelessness charity,  in addition to the health risks of living in this sub-standard accommodation it leaves the tenants open to exploitation, "The danger is that tenants will be made imminently homeless, because when the council catches up with the landlords, you are going to get turfed out,"...... "You also have no recourse to law. If the landlord whacks the rent up then you have no claims to make under the law. You have no laws to protect your rights, and you are left open to exploitation, with your health at risk and with no security." 

In their report the Alliance sets out  recommendations designed to address the growing problems with housing in this country. Key recommendations include a call to provide 500,000 green and affordable homes per year for the next seven years (including the use of empty dwellings), a reform of land supply and land taxation to help fund regeneration and affordable housing initiatives, re-defining the term “affordable” and rescinding recent changes to housing benefit.

 

Dr Stephen Battersby, president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, which brought the Alliance together, said: "The lack of a coherent housing policy for the past 30 years has created an expensive housing market with a shortage of affordable housing. 

(Acknowledgements to The Independent and Children & Young People Now)