Author: Steve Hilditch

I get to speak at meetings a fair bit, normally Labour Party or tenant campaign meetings around the place. Recently I’ve taken to asking audiences if it is possible for a landlord to let a home that is ‘unfit for human habitation’. Of course not, they usually say (although some think it was probably a new measure brought in by David Cameron….).

If they were right there would be no need for the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill which Karen Buck MP has introduced as a private member’s Bill. It is scheduled to have its second reading on 19 January 2018.

Having been involved in one successful private member’s Bill in the past (on standards in houses in multiple occupation, which passed the Commons but was lost when the 1983 general election was called) I know how hard it is to make progress with one unless it is something around which there is a strong consensus and government support (or at least acquiescence).

There have been two recent attempts to ban the letting of homes that are unfit – Tories ‘talked out’ a previous Bill and voted against it when it was brought up as an amendment subsequently. However, the electoral arithmetic has changed since June, the government is beginning to be embarrassed by its reputation for being callous in its treatment of poor people, and the time might be right for them to want to be seen to be doing the right thing.

Crucially, for the Bill to proceed there must be 100 MPs present on 19 January to guarantee a vote. It’s not as easy as it sounds because private member’s Bills are debated on a Friday when most MPs have returned to their constituencies. So: that’s where everyone interested in progressive housing policies comes in. Please make sure your MP is there to vote for the Bill!

Karen is advised by a team of legal experts and the Nearly Legal website has had excellent coverage of the detail of the Bill and its progress. Giles Peaker of Anthony Gold solicitors has written a short briefing on the Bill, setting out why it is important and what it does. I’ve extracted key points below, but the Nearly Legal website will be the best destination for detailed information about the Bill.

Giles is asking that you should contact your MP and to ask them to attend on 19 January. You can find your MP here. He also refers to Shelter’s petition in support of the Bill.

As Giles says:

“I make no apology for going on about this. It is a relatively simple change to the law, but one that could have significant and lasting effects. It is too important to be allowed to be filibustered out. Some one million rented homes in England, social and private, have category 1 HHSRS hazards, amounting to a serious risk to health.”

Please support this important Bill.

Thanks

Steve

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation and Liability for Housing Standards) Bill promoted by Karen Buck MP

Why is the Bill needed?

Currently, landlords have no obligation to their tenants to put or keep the property in a condition fit for habitation. There is an obligation on the landlord to repair the structure of the property, and keep in repair, heating, gas, water and electricity installations, but that only applies where something is broken or damaged. It does not cover things like fire safety, or inadequate heating, or poor ventilation causing condensation and mould growth.

There are a whole range of ‘fitness’ issues, which seriously affect the well-being and safety of tenants, about which tenants can do nothing at all. For private sector tenants, or housing association tenants, it is possible for the local authority to enforce fitness standards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System and Housing Act 2004.

However, there is a huge degree of variability in inspection, notices and enforcement rates by councils. About 50% of councils have served none or only one HA 2004 notice in the last year. One London council, which has an active enforcement policy, amounted to 50% of notices served nationally and 70% in London. What this means is that there is a complete postcode lottery on the prospects of councils taking steps – with the real prospect being that the council won’t do so.

For council tenants, the Housing Act 2004/HHSRS standards are all but pointless. Local Housing Authorities cannot enforce against themselves. So council tenants have no way to enforce or seek to have enforced basic fitness standards, including fire safety, if their landlord doesn’t do anything.

Poor standards are a widespread problem. According to the latest English Housing Survey, 16.8% of private tenanted properties have Category 1 HHSRS hazards (which are classed as a serious risk to the occupiers’ health). That is 756,000 households, at least 36% of which contain children, and there are a further 244,000 social tenanted properties which have Category 1 HHSRS hazards. That is a million properties altogether. It is likely that more than 3 million people, including children, live in rented properties that present a serious risk to their health and safety.

What does the Bill do?

The Bill aims to complement local authority enforcement powers, by enabling all tenants to take action on the same issues and standards as local authorities can, and to give council tenants recourse. It follows the recommendations of the Law Commission and the Court of Appeal.

For any tenancy granted for less than 7 years term (including all periodic tenancies), the Bill will add an implied term that

(a) that the dwelling is fit for human habitation at the time of the grant; and,

(b) that the lessor will thereafter keep it fit for human habitation.

If the property is a flat, the obligation extends to all parts of the building in which the landlord has an interest, so it would include the common parts and the outside of a block of flats if all owned by the same landlord.

There are some exceptions, where the problem is caused by the tenant, or where the landlord can’t do anything to fix the problem without breaking the law, or where they can’t do anything without the permission of a superior landlord and that has been refused.

What this would mean is that the tenant could take action against the landlord to make them put right any problems or hazards that make the property unfit and could seek compensation when the landlord hasn’t done so.

It is not a replacement for the council’s own powers, but works alongside them, enabling tenants to take action where the council hasn’t, or can’t. For all new tenancies after the Bill comes into force, it will make it a right to have a home fit for living in.

In the week when the final death toll of the Grenfell Tower disaster was announced to be 71, it is right that social housing should move further into the spotlight. The Chartered Institute of Housing has announced a major new project aimed at shaping the future of the sector, called ‘Rethinking Social Housing’. It joins the government, which is holding its own review, and the Labour Party, which is close to confirming the details of the review announced by Jeremy Corbyn during his conference speech.

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry, chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, also moved two steps forward this week with the appointment of three expert assessors – to join a huge team of lawyers and a team of fire experts – and by publishing an update on the Inquiry so far.

The progress report illustrates what a complex Inquiry this will be. It has had an unprecedented number of applications to be Core Participants in the Inquiry – 545 applications, of which 393 have already been granted – and has embarked on a review of the first 200,000 documents received. Detailed attention is being given to tracking the generation and movement of fire and smoke and taking witness statements from, amongst others, the 225 residents who escaped the fire and the 260 firefighters who attended. Phase 1 of the Inquiry will focus on the ‘factual narrative’ of what happened on 14 June. Meanwhile, the silent marches every 14th get bigger every month.

Grenfell Silent March 14 Nov 2017. Pic: Barcroft media for the Sun.

Link to Justice for Grenfell campaign.

It is natural, given the track record since 2010, to be cynical about what the government is up to. Less than two years ago it seemed on course to eliminate social rented housing entirely from the new building programme and to pursue the rapid managed decline of the sector. The 2016 Housing and Planning Act was the nadir with the introduction of right to buy for housing associations paid for by the sale of ‘high value’ council houses.

Things are more confused now. Gavin Barwell, a Minister who plainly did not believe in his own government’s policies, has moved to the centre as Theresa May’s chief of staff, and new Minister Alok Sharma has won some plaudits for travelling the country post-Grenfell ‘listening to tenants’. Importantly, there is no sign of high value sales being implemented, warmer words are being spoken about social housing, Theresa May announced £2 billion for 25,000 ‘council houses’ in her conference speech (alongside £10 billion for ‘Help to Buy’), and the government has been rowing back (slowly) on some of its worst welfare reforms. The post-2020 rent increase settlement was warmly welcomed by the sector because it supported investment (although the tenants who will pay for it were rather less pleased).

Next week’s budget is the next significant milestone, with more details expected on funding for social housing (is it real extra money or another three- card trick?), issues like council borrowing capacity and retention of right to buy receipts, and welfare reform including Universal Credit. The mood music has definitely changed – as the ever-prescient Jules Birch notes in his pre-budget blog, “The clamouring is not just coming from the usual suspects but also from investment bankers, right-wing thinktanks and Conservative MPs.” As Jules concludes: ‘It’s hard to remember the run-up to a Budget with such raised expectations – or so much potential for them to be dashed.’

The Budget might not see much hard cash but it may see some funny financial fiddling to enable more to be spent on homes without the cost impacting on the government’s deficit. There has been a frisson of excitement because the Office for National Statistics seems willing to redefine housing association borrowing as ‘private’ not ‘public’. In practice the ONS decision to go the other way a couple of years ago seems to have had little effect, but it raises the possibility of more significant changes for the local authority sector, either by reclassifying public corporations outside the definition of public borrowing (because they are trading activities) or by new financial instruments that could take borrowing for new housing outside the definition of public borrowing. Nerdy, certainly; important, definitely – as we’ve pointed out on Red Brick before.

So we are entering an important phase for social housing: imminent are the budget, Sadiq Khan’s proposals for The London Plan, the myriad of reviews, and the Grenfell Inquiry. There will be a lot of technical detail flying about, but there will also be plenty of us determined to keep the debate focused on people, their safety and well-being, and meeting their housing needs. Time alone will tell if this really is the turning point.

Some weeks there are just too many interesting things to read, and my highlights this week were a report from Shelter on the use of viability assessments in housebuilding and a blog from the Resolution Foundation on impact of Help to Buy. Both show how poorly-designed policies are pushing up prices and making homes even less affordable.

The Shelter report, by Rose Grayston, ‘Slipping through the Loophole’, based on original research, looks at the ways in which the provision of affordable homes in new development has been undermined since new planning rules were introduced in 2012.

The rules allowed developers to reduce the amount of community benefit they are required to produce as part of a development scheme if their profits are estimated to fall below 20%. (Yes, 20%, sound like a good rake-in for anyone, but this is the minimum figure seen to be competitive in the 2012 rules). As Shelter says, the system ‘rewards developers who overpay for land to guarantee they win sites, safe in the knowledge they will be able to argue down community benefits to make their money back later’.

Shelter calls for the government to amend the national planning rules to limit such assessments to defined genuinely exceptional cases. Certainty about the required number of affordable homes will, they say, become part of the normal cost of doing business. Developers will still make good returns but there will be a downward pressure in the system on land prices. The change would not require any additional public money.

Between 2012-13 and 2015-16 so-called ‘section 106′ planning obligation agreements delivered 38% of the new affordable homes built in England, an average of 17,000 homes a year, around 10,000 homes a year fewer than the previous four years – a period which also included the global financial crash and recession.

Shelter’s research covered 11 council areas around the country. Where viability assessments were deployed, new sites produced just 7% affordable housing, on average 79% below the levels required by the policies of the councils concerned. Viability assessments were used in half of all the developments in the study – but they were skewed towards bigger developers on bigger sites, with small and medium sized developers much less likely to deploy the technique. Councils varied in their policies to resist viability assessments, and it is hard for councils to compete with the large resources some developers can muster to prepare the assessments in the first place. There are often lengthy and costly negotiations. Assessments have generally been confidential and therefore not open to scrutiny by bodies outside the council, especially campaigning groups.

The Resolution Foundation blog, by Lindsay Judge, called ‘Helping or Hindering? The latest on Help to Buy’ assesses the impact of the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme following the government’s announcement that it would put another £10 billion into the scheme. Supposedly designed to help people fulfil their dream of home ownership. Lindsay asks ‘is this expensive policy really doing people any favours?

HTB was introduced in 2013 when the housing market was weak. By offering buyers additional help it was intended to bolster supply by more effectively guaranteeing that developers would be able to sell new homes to someone. ‘Four years on’, says Lindsay, ‘the real world effects…. are plain to see’. In particular, the risk that the policy would actually stoke prices ‘has come to pass’. Worse, ‘the HTB discount is being ‘baked in’ to the price of new properties by developers’. One indicator is that the price of new homes is inflating significantly faster than the price of existing homes when they are resold (see chart). The policy is also not well targeted and has a lot of ‘deadweight’ – that is, it is used by people who could have bought a home without the subsidy – estimated even by the DCLG to be 35%. Some people with incomes over £100k have used the scheme.

 

House price index by type of build (April 2013=100): England Source: RF analysis of ONS house price index (graph taken from Resolution Foundation Lindsay Judge blog)HTB now takes 45% of the national housing spend in 2016-17. So, why does government do this? HTB of course is not the same type of money as spending on housing grant for affordable homes. It is a loan not a grant. As Lindsay explains, just like student loans, it shows up in the government accounts as a debt but not as part of the deficit. It is a smoke and mirrors policy to be seen to be doing something about declining home ownership, offering people who are struggling to buy now some help – but at the expense of those following later who will have to pay more as a result.

If HTB is not in the long term a subsidy for home owners, who have to repay, it is a subsidy for developers who get the sum in cash when a HTB home is bought. It directly enables them to put their prices up, so the policy itself become self-defeating in the medium term.

£10 billion would build something like 125,000 social homes. That option might be an evil in the eyes of the Treasury, says Lindsay, ‘but it would be a far greater good than HTB from a living standards point of view’.

Looking after developers and landowners is the underlying theme of both policies. But with the government now in retreat on many fronts, and even starting to concede the case on the importance of social housing, new campaigning opportunities are beginning to emerge.

(amended 4/11/2017 to correct bad link to Shelter report).

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to Labour Party Conference on Wednesday has caused a bit of a stir, notably his comments on regeneration and rent control. So what did he actually say and are they new departures?
He said a lot about Grenfell, focusing on the fact that it was an avoidable disaster and looking at events from the tenants’ perspective. He said it indicted ‘failed housing policies… and yawning inequality’. I don’t disagree, but I would repeat my warning that we have to be careful how we talk about the disaster. Grenfell does not tell us that social housing is a bad idea. When the Tories say ‘we must now talk about social housing’ I don’t think they want to have more of it and to make it better.
The most important announcement in Corbyn’s speech was that there would be a Labour enquiry into social housing policy – parallel to the government’s – with Shadow Housing minister John Healey looking at its building, planning, regulation and management. He promised that Labour would listen to tenants across the country and bring forward a radical programme of action.
In support of his core contention that ‘a decent home is a right for everyone whatever their income or background’ Corbyn listed a number of policies which I don’t think are controversial within Labour:

• insist that every home is fit for human habitation (which the Tories have consistently voted down).
• ‘control rents’ – despite much of the comment since the speech I suspect this is not a major new departure but a reiteration of the Manifesto commitments, possibly with some strengthened ‘Berlin-style’ delegated powers for large cities, and perhaps more interventionist policies like the London controls on Airbnb – which is of course a form of rent control.
• tax undeveloped land held by developers – using the Ed Miliband formulation of “Use it or lose it”.

Corbyn’s most significant area of new policy, and possibly controversy, concerned regeneration, where his comments mirrored a resolution passed by Conference. He said ‘Regeneration is a much abused word. Too often what it really means is forced gentrification and social cleansing, as private developers move in and tenants and leaseholders are moved out.’
He established a basic principle: Regeneration should be for the benefit of the local people, not private developers. So, people must get a home on the same site and the same terms as before with ‘No social cleansing, no jacking up rents, no exorbitant ground rents’. And there should be a ballot of existing tenants and leaseholders before any redevelopment scheme can take place.
I thought Aditya Chakrabortty, in an otherwise interesting column for the Guardian, over-egged the new policy by claiming that Corbyn had declared war on some Labour Councils. Personally, I think Corbyn’s requirements are the minimum and I would go further. It is not enough simply to offer a new home to those who wish to return after regeneration – and some councils have had to be dragged into doing that – with the majority of new homes being for private sale. Regeneration – where it involves providing more homes in total – must make a net contribution towards meeting the housing needs of the district in question. Homes taken from the pool of rented homes to ‘decant’ residents from the area to be regenerated must as an absolute minimum be replaced in number and in kind within the completed scheme. Otherwise it is the homeless and badly housed who pay the real price of the regeneration scheme. There should be no dodges like replacing social rent with so-called ‘affordable rent’ or even ‘affordable home ownership’ – there should be a requirement that new social rent homes will replace those that have been lost. If that cannot be achieved through comprehensive redevelopment, then other options should be pursued, including partial redevelopment and infill. Many perfectly good estates are being proposed for redevelopment when what they need is better management and some investment to make them better places to live.
It was good to see Jeremy focus on housing in his speech, but all I see are sensible pragmatic policies that are a million miles better than what we have to suffer now. Not much controversy here. It is the review of social housing policy that carries most hope of future radical steps.  

Current policy of increasing reliance on the private rented sector and allowing the stock of sub-market rental housing to dwindle is not “fiscally sustainable and economically efficient” says the SHOUT** campaign in its submission to the 2017 Budget.
SHOUT’s core proposition is that there should be a long term government commitment to a sponsored programme rising to 100,000 new units a year of housing at genuinely affordable rents, alongside other tenures, which would:

• bring down the cost to government of supporting low-income households
• address the longstanding and serious economic weakness of under-supply of housing which has been so resistant to other policy approaches
• via Right to Buy or formal rent to buy schemes, offer a pathway towards home ownership;
• help address pressures on public services, notably health and social care.

The long term case for building social rented homes was set out in 2015 in the report for SHOUT by Capital Economics ‘Building New Social Rent Homes: an Economic Appraisal’, updated in 2016 to add additional analysis of the implications of alternative possible outcomes from the UK’s exit from the European Union.

SHOUT’s programme would increase the requirement for public borrowing in the short term, with a peak impact on the PSBR of 0.13% in 2020 as the costs kick in but the benefits are yet to be realised. SHOUT points out that the positive impact on the public finances in the longer term are extremely strong and that there would be significant benefits in other programmes, especially in health, education, and social care.
They also point out that the government is already committed to spending over £40 billion by 2020-21 on programmes and incentives designed (not always very effectively) to boost housing supply – there is scope for reallocation within this total to fund the proposed increase in social rented supply. Homes are also an asset on the public balance sheet and generate a permanent income stream.
SHOUT’s submission also addresses two other important issues, both of which require policy to be set consistently across both CLG and DWP programmes.

• the need for a stable, fair and sustainable settlement for social housing rents – the rent regime has become muddled with unclear objectives and unpredictable outcomes as important changes in rents and social security payments have been introduced. Policies for housing investment, rents and welfare must be properly co-ordinated. SHOUT is doing more work on rent policy for publication at a later date.
• ensuring that existing and new supported housing is viable: the current uncertainty caused by restricting benefit to the local LHA rate needs to be lifted in the Budget, and SHOUT supports recommendations made by the DWP and CLG Select Committees for a new funding mechanism for supported housing.

The Budget submission is an excellent summary of the case for additional investment including many charts.
**SHOUT  is a volunteer – run campaign making the case for investment in genuinely affordable homes and demonstrating the positive effects that such housing has on people and communities. SHOUT can be followed on Twitter at @4socialhousing and its website is  www.4socialhousing.co.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Red Brick is delighted to publish a guest blog by the St. Ann’s Redevelopment Trust (StART), the community land trust in Haringey, about the work they are doing and the broader case for CLTs.
Across the capital, Labour councils have long been aware of the growing housing crisis that has seen homeownership falling, a massive growth in the numbers of private renters living in poverty, and a lack of social housing for ordinary Londoners.
Everyone knows that major action is needed, yet this is leading to a ‘regeneration predicament’, where because something must be done, doing anything to build new homes is seen as progress.
This attitude, combined with a lack of central government funding for housing associations, and the continued bar on councils borrowing the amounts required for a new generation of council housing, has led many labour councils to rely too heavily on private developers as the only means of driving up housing starts.
But increasing the number of homes built in London is only one part of the solution, as Sadiq Khan recognised when he said we need to build ‘the right kinds of homes’. As the market is so out of control, simply building any number of homes for market sale or rent will not be a housing solution for most people.
And with regeneration projects leading to a net loss of social housing across the city, and a lack of transparency about how levels of affordable housing are decided on new developments, it’s no wonder that residents are angry and suspicious, while councils say they are just trying to build new homes.
The current model isn’t working, and if councils want to deliver the largest amount of affordable homes, which will be accessible to future generations, while being supported by their residents, they need to start focusing on large-scale community housing.
Community land trusts (CLTs) can provide higher levels of genuinely affordable homes because they do not seek a profit and are based on long-term investment; furthermore, the model of creating homes that don’t inflate in value with the open market means they remain affordable for future purchasers and renters.
The vital nature of genuine affordability aside, though, what’s so exciting about community-led housing is the way it ensures locals have a proper stake in any future development, whether they are living on the site or not.
Community-led housing takes in the concerns of people in an area and translates them into projects that meet local needs, on a design basis that suits the area and with the ability to provide a range of other community facilities so that these developments create long-term benefit for the whole neighbourhood.

Our project, St. Ann’s Redevelopment Trust (StART), seeks to build 800 homes on NHS land in the London Borough of Haringey. Homes will be for sale and rent, with 75% genuinely affordable, controlled by the community and remaining affordable in perpetuity.
Our plans include maintaining and supporting the unique biodiversity that currently exists on the site, as well as ensuring that a health legacy is retained, by ensuring the development complements the adjoining NHS facilities that will be renewed following the sale of the land. We will also be retaining a number of the historic buildings on the site that previously formed part of the old hospital.
Our vison has been developed though public events, on and offline surveys, and interactions with 100s of local residents, meaning we are able to bring forward a locally-supported proposal with much higher density than was proposed when the site got outline planning permission.
We also believe that creating a community asset that will put a dent in Haringey’s housing crisis and make links with its surroundings is a much better use of public land than just selling off the site to the highest private bidder.
Across the country, land belonging to the NHS, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice, and of course councils, is being sold off to private developers when it could remain in the community.
A number of CLTs have been developed in recent years, but it’s time for councils and the Labour Party to support them at scale, and recognise the important ways they can contribute to a sustainable housing supply.
London’s communities need a new approach that makes housing about their needs and aspirations, and remains affordable in the long-term.
As we move towards the 2018 local elections, all Labour councils should be thinking about how they can support community housing, and we hope that StART can be part of the change in direction that London so desperately needs.
You can find out more about StART at www.startharingey.co.uk or on Twitter @startharingey

I have found it hard to comment on the Grenfell Tower disaster. Words cannot convey the horror of it, and everything I tried to write felt hopelessly inadequate. Others succeeded where I failed, and I would recommend thoughtful pieces penned by Chris Creegan, Municipal Dreams, and Giles Peaker amongst others.
I was so angry at the ineptitude of the council’s and the government’s response and so in awe of the magnificent response of the emergency services and the local community. They are in total contrast to each other.

pic: Metropolitan Police

I was also stunned that within hours some people started to use the fire to attack social housing. One tweeter said: ‘The nature + quality of social housing is probably the single biggest post-war British policy failure’ and there were plenty of a similar ilk. Others reverted to well-worn dystopian myths and Clockwork Orange imagery about council estates. Yesterday, first Theresa May and then Sajid Javid said we should pay more attention to social housing, but I found that menacing rather than reassuring. The dreaded Iain Duncan Smith called for tower blocks to be flattened and replaced by nice houses with gardens, presumably without the council tenant tag.
Grenfell does not tell me that we should have less social housing, or that private housing is somehow superior, or that tower blocks are bad – on the contrary we need more social housing of all types and, whatever its height, it should be of a highest possible standard. And it should be better resourced and better managed.

The best memorial to all those who have lost their lives in Grenfell is that we as a nation choose collectively to invest in safe and secure public housing for all who need it.
Municipal Dreams blog

I do not know if cuts in spending on fire services and deregulation of some aspects of fire safety contributed to the Grenfell fire. But after a long period of decline, fire deaths have been rising again, and fire chiefs have put this down to cuts of up to 50% in some places. The fire statistics do not help us understand if there is a specific problem in social housing, but it seems highly unlikely. In the vast majority of cases, fires in towers are contained and the building does what it is supposed to do. The social factor that seems to have the biggest correlation with death by fire is age, with people over 80 particularly vulnerable. They live in all tenures. In the 1980s at Shelter I spent a lot of time working with the Campaign for Bedsit Rights trying to get standards in multi-occupied property raised after many fire deaths in such properties, including the appalling fire in a rabbit warren terrace of bedsits in Clanricarde Gardens in 1981, where 8 people died a mere mile from Grenfell Tower.

Will the Prime Minister today guarantee that local authorities will be fully funded for an urgent review of tower block safety and all remedial action that is necessary, including the installation of sprinklers when appropriate, so that they can proceed in a matter of days with that comfort? Does she agree that regulation is a necessary element of a safe society, not a burden, and will she legislate swiftly when necessary to ensure that all high-rise residents are safe?
Karen Buck MP, House of Commons, 22 June.

Heightened concern about fire safety in towers can be traced back to the previously worst tower block fire at Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009, when 6 people died. Exterior cladding panels were identified as having helped the fire to spread fast both laterally and vertically, as with Grenfell. Yesterday Mrs May said “All recommendations from the coroner on the Lakanal House inquiry have been acted on” but this was strongly disputed by the local MP, Harriet Harman, and others. It is clear that the requested review of building regulations has not been concluded and published.
Even more damning of government is the lack of action in response to a series of letters from the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on fire safety, chaired by the Conservative Sir David Amess, which included calls for sprinklers to be fitted in all towers. And the Tory obsession with deregulation was highlighted by the Guardian yesterday, reporting that the government-connected Red Tape initiative has been discussing how to reduce ‘the burden’ of fire regulations post-Brexit, including for external cladding.
I have spent much of my working life defending both social housing as a housing model and social tenants as an unfairly derided class of people. Rather than the stereotype of chain-smoking can-carrying foul-mouthed council tenants, after the Grenfell Tower fire  a succession of residents described the events in the tower, the failings of the council and the TMO, and the strength of their community with extraordinary eloquence. As their back-stories emerged, we learned of the remarkable range of people living in the tower, people of all faiths and none, often with amazing and sometimes horrific histories. Their common point was that by some chance they had ended up in the cosmopolitan community of north Kensington (David Cameron’s Notting Hill is a few streets but a world away). In the aftermath of the fire we learned of the extraordinary compassion and dedication of ordinary people willing to help each other.
The surviving residents and those evacuated from surrounding homes were initially treated with callous disregard until the community stepped up and stepped in as the death toll rose. Some of the stories of neglect and indifference by the council tell me that rather more than the chief executive of Kensington and Chelsea should resign. It was the council’s job to organise the non-uniform response and they failed miserably and absolutely. They evidently turned down offers of assistance from neighbouring boroughs and the GLA, arrogantly assuming they could do the minimum required. They appeared not to understand the extent of their duty to all residents in an emergency under the homelessness legislation. Above all, they did not seem to care much. They were overwhelmed and it took days before more competent people were brought in. I am not alone in thinking that a civil emergency on this scale required military expertise: I am sure the army could have sorted communications and logistics in hours especially with so much community help. Traumatised victims could and should have been helped much faster with a range of services to meet both their physical and emotional needs.
Responsibility for the fire will continue to be debated, not least in the House of Commons as it was yesterday. As the Guardian’s John Crace pointed out, Theresa May has had legal advice, but has been found to be ‘morally wanting’, and during questions ‘the sound of backs being covered was all too audible’. Fingers are being pointed, and I suspect responsibility will be located at several stages in the very long chain from building regulations to contractor. The specifics may have to await the criminal investigation and the public inquiry.
We also have to wait to see how many other towers are dressed in flammable cladding, it is possibly quite a few, and not all in social housing. Some Councils, like Camden, have already started removing suspect cladding, and it is hoped that blocks can be made safe quickly without rehousing becoming necessary.
Grenfell Tower alone has required between 100 and 200 replacement homes to be found from a diminishing stock of social housing. Attention has focused on one block of ‘luxury flats’ being bought by the City of London, but it turns out these were always destined to be some form of social housing. No information has been made available on the rents and service charges that will be levied, what form of tenancy will be offered and for how long. The first principles are that residents should be suitably rehoused and not be out of pocket.
As the supply of new genuinely affordable social rented homes has collapsed to a little over 1,000 homes nationally last year, from 36,000 in 2010, most of the homes that are likely to be available will be at so-called ‘affordable rents’ at up to 80% of market rents. Rehoused tenants must not be expected to pay those rents, the difference should be made up by the council. Some DWP rules have been suspended for these residents, but it has also been said that they would have to pay bedroom tax if they ended up with a spare room. That is grotesque.
The numbers matter. Unless extra social housing is provided in total then the people who will actually pay for this crisis will be those homeless families or people on the housing waiting list who will not be rehoused as a consequence. One way round this would be government to fund the purchase of an equivalent number of homes on the open market – as happened in the early 1990s to mitigate the housing market slump.
Theresa May was as slippery as can be when challenged about how the works to blocks like Grenfell will be paid for. It could be hundreds of millions. This should be a central government commitment, a new fund provided by the whole country to avoid another tragedy. May wouldn’t commit, just saying it will be done. What is most likely is that government will allow councils to borrow more to pay for the works, with the cost falling to the housing revenue account. And there’s the rub: unless there is specific subsidy or grant, extra borrowing on the HRA will be funded in the long term by tenants through their rents. Tenants will pay for a fire safety crisis that is not of their making.
It is absolutely right that the victims of the fire should have top priority and should be rehoused as quickly as possible. No-one will disagree that similar panels should be stripped from other blocks. No-one will object to an extensive programme of fire safety improvements, including for example sprinklers, in all towers currently without them. But, whoever is found to be responsible, it is not right that the actual burden of putting things right should fall on existing tenants and homeless people waiting for a home. Central government should foot the bill, sharing the load. That’s why we all pay taxes.

 

There may be good reasons – in particular murder and mayhem on our streets – but another Election has passed in which housing has been the dog that didn’t bark.
Sadly too late to have the impact it deserves in the Election campaign, Labour yesterday published its Housing Manifesto, enlarging on and extending the housing section of the main Manifesto put out a couple of weeks ago.
References to housing in the campaign so far have mainly consisted of the bandying about of some impressively large numbers. The LibDems played their trump card with the biggest housebuilding offer (300K a year), although their promise has been inflating as fast as their support has been falling. It quickly became apparent that the Tories have spent the last seven years muddling up their housing target (hundreds of thousands) with their immigration target (tens of thousands) and just promised again what they failed to deliver in the past.
The housing section of Labour’s main Manifesto was quite well received, and this fuller version deserves praise for tackling the issues in a comprehensive way. When it comes to housing policy, the word comprehensive is important: it’s not just a numbers game, it’s about getting lots of elements of policy right so it adds up to an effective strategy.
The document covers all the tenures. In home ownership it focuses help specifically on first time buyers, following up on the Redfearn review. It makes the important proposal to remove stamp duty on homes of less that £300K for two years, introduces permanently discounted FirstBuy homes, and restricts Help to Buy to first time buyers only. It implies that developers will qualify for Help to Buy only if they enter agreements on their building rates, which could be a game changing idea. And it borrows from Sadiq Khan in giving ‘first dibs’ to locals when homes go on sale.
Labour will also back existing home owners with a range of new initiatives. The safety net for low income home owners will be strengthened, long forgotten leaseholders will get new rights, and there will be new controls on variable rate mortgages. A new housing renewal programme is signalled alongside a new drive to insulate existing homes. There will be a review of housing options for older people wishing to downsize.
Building on the solid base of the Lyons Commission report, major changes to the operation of the housebuilding industry are proposed. The role of the Homes and Communities Agency will be strengthened, as will be the powers of local councils to assemble land at closer to existing value. We are promised the biggest council housebuilding programme for30 years. Help to Buy will be used as a bargaining chip to secure a wide-ranging agreement with the sector on output and standards in design and quality. There will be a review of the post-Brexit capacity of the construction industry.
To my great relief, Labour unambiguously promises a new programme of affordable homes for social rent, and the target will be to achieve 100,000 ‘genuinely affordable’ homes to rent or buy by 2022, which we have argued before on Red Brick is a sensible and realistic gearing up from the current abysmal position. Long term tenancies will be unbanned and right to buy will be suspended – to be reinstated only where full replacement can be guaranteed. More affordable housing will lead to housing benefit savings, which will be ploughed back to ease the worst aspects of the Tories’ benefits policy – like ending the Bedroom Tax.
There is a promise of a ‘consumer rights revolution’ for private renters. There will be new legal minimum standards with stronger enforcement and an extension of licensing. Three year tenancies will become the norm, with inflation-controlled rent rises. Lettings charges for tenants will be banned and councils will be encouraged to set up local lettings agencies in their areas.
Homelessness is seen as the most visible sign of the Tories’ failure. A target will be set to end rough sleeping in a campaign which will be led by the new Prime Minister in a Labour Government. There will be a gradual shift to a ‘Housing First’ policy seen to be effective in other countries. They will halt the plans to change funding for supported housing to avoid the closure of homeless hostels.
All in all, this is a decent attempt at a comprehensive new housing policy in less than 20 pages. It has gaps, undoubtedly, in particular it could have said much more about planning and it looks at homelessness almost entirely from the perspective of rough sleeping – only one element of the growing problem. It has weaknesses – for example not addressing the long term balance of tenures and glossing over regional disparities, and it has a touching sense of confidence which I don’t share that the Homes and Communities Agency can become the driving force behind housebuilding delivery.  And there will be many detailed  financial questions that need to be considered and answered.
Whether the document could have sparked a real debate around housing if it had been published earlier is open to question. Regrettably I can see very little converage of it today except in specialist media. It is an area where Labour is strong – Jeremy Corbyn and John Healey in particular – and the Tories weak and threadbare. I guess we will never know, but, win or lose, Labour has at least got its housing policy into a good place.

As campaigning was temporarily suspended today in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox, many will recall her watchwords ‘There is more that unites us than divides us.’
There have been lots of phoney wars in this election, especially with the new Leader of UKIP/Tory Theresa May blaming foreigners and immigrants for most of our problems. One false dividing line is the so-called war between the generations. This morning on the Marr show, DWP Secretary of State Damian Green claimed that the Tories’ new social care for the elderly policy is about promoting ‘inter-generational fairness’.
It is fashionable (but wrong) to say that the older generation are having it easy at the expense of the younger generation. People over 65 have paid into the state system all of their working lives in a social contract that should mean they are looked after through their old age. Even now 1.6 million pensioners officially live in poverty according to Age UK. The issue is not inter-generational, it is that the few have got richer and the many have got poorer across all generations.
I do not suffer from the seemingly natural tendency towards conservatism amongst older people, nor do I share the nostalgia of many for an imagined better past. But these feelings have been exploited by the Conservatives. With their friends at the Daily Mail, they have convinced many elderly voters that they are on their side. The evidence is less convincing: it was Cameron’s ‘triple lock’ on pensions that established their pro-elderly credentials, but at the same time they were stripping away funding for social care and raising the pension age. Women have been hit very hard by deferring the pension age. There are also many people in physical and draining jobs – my Dad worked on building sites all his life and was exhausted when he retired at 65 – who will fall out of work in their 60s and spend years waiting for their pension, being subjected to the humiliation of seeking benefits in the nasty and vindictive climate created by Iain Duncan Smith.
The Tories were warned constantly about the damage being done to social care by their cuts. Cameron liked to pretend that austerity would be met by efficiencies and savings in the back room. This was never true and front-line services have been savaged, especially when they were not backed by specific statutory rights. The cuts in social care have had a serious knock-on to the NHS, due to (the rather unpleasantly named) ‘bed blocking’ – where people are not able to leave hospital because even short-term care is not available at home.
Many councils tackled the cuts by first removing low level services like garden maintenance and shopping. Low level they may have been, but for many these were a lifeline and the watershed between independence and dependence. Such services were often provided through local charities who offered volunteering opportunities for young people and some great inter-generational work was done. As the cuts deepened, even services for those most in need were pared back and scandals like the ’15 minute visit’ and poverty wages (many carers are not paid for the time spent travelling between appointments) became more common. Everyone agrees it is both better and cheaper to enable an older person to stay at home, and it is normally their wish to do so.
In housing, older people have been failed too. There have been far too few options for older people, whether tenants or owners, to downsize into more suitable accommodation, releasing larger homes for others to rent or buy. Although May’s current proposals will hit at home owners, the extraordinarily successful sheltered accommodation service run mainly by councils and new supported housing projects have been fatally undermined by changes in funding regimes.

So, having captured the grey vote, they think securely, the Tories feel they can now take it for granted. Their ‘triple whammy’ – ending the pensions triple lock, removing winter fuel payments for most, and requiring people to pay for care at home with their house – means they have lost any claim to be the pensioners’ friend.
Their social care policy is perverse. In many cases a family carer lives with the older person, doing much of the care but relying on council services a lot of the time. If these external care needs are high, the carer’s sacrifice will now be rewarded, when the older person dies, by having to sell the house to repay the cost of the care received. The carer, who may have devoted years of their life to this role, will be both grieving and having to oversee the sale of the home. They will in effect make themselves homeless, and in most  of the country they will not inherit enough to buy another home. It is a callous mind that could invent such a system.
The new system contains no incentive to enable an older person to remain in their home. If their care needs are high, for example if they have dementia but are physically able, their estate will be diminished to £100,000 whatever they do. They might as well go into an expensive care home. Yet Theresa May has the gall to say that her plan is ‘the best way to enable more people to stay in their homes because they won’t be worried about the cost of care because they will know that will be sorted after they have died’. She appears not to know anything about older people and how they see the world.
And remember, not one penny piece of the exchequer savings made by this policy will be redirected into support for young people, who are being punished at the same time with policies ranging from tuition fees to the removal of housing benefit for 18-21 year olds. Instead, the money will actually be used for the Tory priorities of reducing corporate taxes and taxes on high earners. As the Tories take it out on older people, the myth of the war between generations deserves to be exposed.