Charlotte Cane

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am an East Cambridgeshire district councillor—a district council that erroneously boasts of being debt free because it sold its housing stock many years ago, and that criticises the other district council in my constituency, South Cambridgeshire, and indeed Cambridge city, for having major debts, without mentioning that those councils have retained their council houses, built more, and continue to build more. I agree with the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) that we have to address that. Average house prices in my constituency are about 10 times the average salary, and the average rent is over £1,000 a month, so it is not surprising that a lot of emails in my inbox are about social housing need. I have had people in my surgeries in tears because they cannot get a decent home for their family. We must build more council houses; I support that. I would like the Minister to consider rural areas carefully. In such areas, we might be able to accommodate only two or three units, but we really do need them. It is not just a case of building large quantities in the bigger towns; we need a good mix of council housing, including larger houses for larger families, and bungalows for people who are getting older and want to downsize. We also need to make sure that the houses that we have are in really good condition. I really welcome the warm homes social housing fund, which is helping many of my constituents to replace their oil-fired boilers with air source heat pumps, but I wonder if there could be a similar sort of grant to bring those houses up to a good standard. Many of them were built in the ’20s and ’30s, and were then very poorly insulated around the ’70s, which added to the damp problems. Addressing those problems is a huge cost for social housing providers. As we have heard, when those houses become empty, because the providers cannot make the figures stack up—the cost of the repairs versus the future income stream from rent—they sell the houses in the private sector. Some of those houses are in my villages, where we already do not have anything like enough social houses. Providers really need financial help to bring that stock up to a decent standard. People are also worried about shared ownership. They feel trapped into paying very high service charges that they cannot afford, but when they try to sell their property, potential buyers see the charges and pull out of the sale. I am glad that the Government will review that.