Labour MP stresses ‘political importance of repairs’ as social renters consider switching to Reform

These are people for whom the “crisis in repairs, building safety, is right away close at home”, she added.

“Because when their nan or their mum comes out of hospital after the hip replacement, it is a battle and a half to get the rails up, or the steps that she needs, because we are not good enough at repairs.”

But Catherine Thomas, chief corporate affairs officer at Clarion, highlighted the difficulty of balancing investing in repairs and in building new homes. 

For every additional £1m in costs, Clarion loses 18 new homes, she said, and there is also a “massive skills issues in the UK”.

The housing association, the largest in the UK, carries out more than 1,200 repairs per day across its stock of 125,000 homes.

“So we’re spending over £1m a day on repairs and planned investment in existing homes,” she explained.

“And beyond that we are endeavouring to meet some of the retrofit targets to provide residents with warmer homes, [and homes that are] more efficient and cheaper to heat, at the same time.

“So some of the challenges are really around the business as usual because the very positive and very understandable new legislation that’s coming down the line – and there is so much of it coming this year, next year, and the following years and so much of it comes from a fantastic place – is costing us money.

“You know there’s only one place that that comes from and that comes from building new homes.”

As Ms Bance set out earlier in the panel, Labour voters considering switching to Reform are keen for new affordable housing to be built.

“They’re not nimbys, they are desperate to get their sons and daughters the benefit they had of an affordable home on an affordable rent and they can’t see how they can do it,” the MP added.

But the MP, who had a stint as Shelter’s head of campaigns in the early 2010s, warned that trust in institutions in her ‘Red Wall’ constituency is “on the floor”.

“So we have to work really hard to rebuild that trust in the openness, the authenticity of what we say.”

This “really matters” when talking about building and development, she added.

She gave the example of 650 new homes on an estate in her constituency, of which at least 25% will be affordable housing.

“Those homes, whenever I post about them on my Facebook, the first comment is, ‘but it’s not for us, it’s for the asylum seekers’.

“That is the first comment, the second comment and a large number of the subsequent comments.

“So one of the learnings that I now do is I am clear, when I post about housing, who I am posting about.”

It means she now does not just talk about affordable housing, but housing that is explicitly for local people from Sandwell Council’s waiting list who have lived in that area for several years. 

“We may all be rightly worried about the direction of some of the prejudiced speech in our country at the moment,” she said.

“But they need to know it is them and people like them, their friends and neighbours, who will get to these new homes, not a mythical somebody else.”