As one who rails against the constant mischaracterisation of council housing and council tenants in the media (and by some housing professionals), watching a serious but entertaining history of council housing was a joy.
Michael Collins’ ‘The Great Estate: The Rise and Fall of the Council House’ not only traced the history of council housing from the building of the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch in 1893 to the demolition of the Heygate Estate in 2011 but did so through a riveting mix of analysis, archive footage and personal histories. It’s a highly recommended watch for anyone with an interest in housing, available on i-player.
I thought Collins made some excellent points in a thread running throughout the programme about the importance of creating neighbourhoods and not just estates of homes, what he called the sense of belonging, and his description of Aneurin Bevan’s concept of a classless new society based on council housing. His criticism of the government’s move towards temporary tenancies was all the more powerful in this context – it will destroy, as he said, the sense of permanence that gives people a reason to make an investment in their homes and estates.
Jimmy McGovern made the point forcefully – despite being a tenant, ‘it was our house not the councils, that’s why we looked after it…… Just because it’s a council house doesn’t mean it’s not yours.’ Tell that to the government and the modern providers who see tenants as transitory occupiers of their (the landlords’) homes.
I also agree with Collins that utopian architecture, government subsidies for high rise, and jerry building caused huge problems, helped spoil the reputation of council estates as places to live and failed the ‘sense of belonging’ test. I would also add bad housing management to the list.
Where I depart from Collins is in his analysis of the impact of the 1977 homelessness legislation. It is not accurate to say it ‘jettisoned policies that favoured locals’ or that it led to the rehousing of ‘itinerant’ people. The vast majority of people rehoused were on local waiting lists and qualified under local connection rules, and having worked as a senior manager in one of the boroughs with the greatest numbers of homeless people, I think his claims that the system was abused are wildly exaggerated.
Of course there were changes on the demand side – as home ownership became an option for many, and as private renting contracted – but for council housing these were less important than what happened to supply. Collins says rightly that Thatcher passed the ‘death sentence’ on council housing, but he does it only in passing. It was the collapse in supply, starting after the 1976 IMF crisis but hugely intensified under Thatcher, that changed the nature of council housing and ended Bevan’s dream. The sector was made to become, as some Tories acknowledged then and some still do today, a residual tenure moving rapidly towards the American model, and with the same consequences.
Nor is it all bad today, or even normally bad. There are millions of people happily living in council homes at affordable rents, with the security of tenure that helps give them that crucial sense of belonging. And there are millions more who would be only too delighted to receive an offer to join them.
See another blogger’s view of the programme – Jules Birch of Inside Housing – here.
Category: Blog Post
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Auld Lang Syne
The eighteenth century French philosopher Voltaire once observed “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”. If the new Scottish Labour Manifesto isn’t quite the new Scottish Enlightenment, it is certainly enlightened compared to anything we hear from the government in Westminster.
The emphasis in the Manifesto is on jobs and achieving greater prosperity in Scotland. But it also contains important housing commitments and an emphasis on affordable housing and mixed communities that has gone missing in the world of Pickles and Shapps (my thesaurus tells me the antonym of enlightenment is ignorance. Seems appropriate.)
The basic tenet of the housing policies in the Manifesto is that many Scots are anxious to obtain and retain secure affordable homes.
For example, on homelessness, it says that a Labour government would work towards meeting the target that all unintentionally homeless people are offered a secure tenancy by 2012 and would provide guidance on the interpretation of homelessness and housing legislation, in stark contrast to the approach in England of removing rights to secure tenancies from homeless people.
A mix of policies are proposed to assist people across the tenures. Labour will review the effectiveness of schemes to help home owners facing repossession, strengthen pre-action protocols, introduce First Foot, a new mortgage indemnity guarantee scheme that aims to reduce deposits to 5 or 10 %, and set up an infrastructure fund to encourage private housing development to build more homes to satisfy demand. New building should meet a Scottish Housing Quality Standard and there will be consultation on raising building standards especially in relation to energy efficiency. There is a strong target to end fuel poverty by 2016 and investment in community and household renewables, such as solar panels and community heat and power schemes, will provide a new revenue stream for housing associations, co-operatives and local authorities through the feed-in tariff.
The Manifesto says Labour will encourage responsible investment in the private rented sector and tighten landlord registration schemes to root out rogue landlords
Labour would establish a Taskforce to strengthen the role of local authorities and housing associations in increasing supply, especially of affordable homes. There is strong support for community-based housing associations and housing co-operatives, in particular in their role as ‘community anchors’, and the remit of the Scottish Investment Bank and Co-operative Development Scotland to will be extended to include housing. Social housing lettings will be reviewed to offer more support for vulnerable people and to ensure sustainable communities. And a Housing Advisory Service would be established for tenants and homeowners and new Housing Tribunal set up.
Scottish Labour Leader Iain Gray introduced the Manifesto ‘Fighting for what really matters’ by saying
“Scottish Labour believes that the foundation for a strong community is fairness. Jobs, opportunity and prosperity must be spread more widely throughout our communities – to improve housing, to regenerate deprived communities, to support the most vulnerable and to lift people out of poverty.”
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More questions than answers
CLG press releases these days are strong on message and weak on information. Yesterday’s big announcement, which led to Grant Shapps tweeting every few minutes about yet another local radio interview he was doing, sounded clever and appealing. The press statement said “Housing Minister Grant Shapps today offered tenants a Cashback deal worth billions to take control of their own homes.”
Wow. Billions! And what does the scheme involve? Well it “will allow residents to take more control of their repairs budgets for their homes, for example carry out their own DIY, or commission it locally and pocket any savings made. Cash they could use however they want – for example, towards a deposit on their own house. With maintenance and repair costing £4billion a year, the move could see a bonanza for small businesses. The Government wants all landlords to offer their tenants the chance to manage more of their repairs budgets – and will consult on bringing forward changes to regulations to give all tenants the option to request it from their landlord.”
Does the press statement answer any of the obvious questions about the scheme? Well, no. Not one. Here’s my starter for 10.
- Will all repairs be eligible? Many repairs involve a statutory requirement on the landlord, for example in relation to the structure, dampness, ventilation, electrics and, perhaps above all, gas. So far as I am aware, the landlord cannot devolve these duties and any other health and safety responsibilities to the tenant.
- Who can the tenant employ to do the repairs? Could they for example do electrical or gas works themselves unsupervised or give work to someone unqualified or to someone without insurance? Could they use someone who illegally evades VAT or tax?
- If the tenant fails to get the repair done properly, or it needs to be rectified by the landlord, who pays?
- The press statement talks about painting work and carpentry work – but aren’t the vast majority of these jobs, if they are internal, already the tenants’ responsibility under the tenancy agreement?
- What is in the proposal that can’t be done by landlords already? And does localism take a back seat when there is a juicy announcement to make?
- What evidence has been collected about current innovations in repairs to inform this decision? There have been huge changes in repairs procurement in recent years, presumably some research and evidence gathering has been done.
- Of the £4bn spent on social housing repairs and maintenance each year, £1000 per home, how much is it estimated could be devolved to tenants, and how does Shapps know it will be ‘billions’.
- Shapps says “Doing your own DIY or choosing a local handyman to do the work – will allow tenants to pocket any savings they make.” Where is the evidence that a tenant can get a job done cheaper than the council’s contractor? How much will they be allowed to ‘pocket’?
- How will the scheme work – will tenants receive a grant from the landlord or payment against invoices and receipts?
- Who will check jobs for quality and safety? Will tenants in homes that need a lot of repairs get more?
In the words of Johnny Nash –
“There are more questions than answers
And the more I find out the less I know.”
There was no pleasure to be taken in watching Nick Clegg flounder his way through yesterday failing to convince anyone that the government was serious about improving social mobility. I suspect he once believed in it, but like other LibDem ministers who used to have something serious to say on the subject – Sarah Teather, Andrew Stunnell and Steve Webb to name but three – he has sold his principles at the knock-down price of a Ministerial car and an AV referendum.
The social mobility strategy should face prosecution under the Trades Description Act. As a strategy it brings together existing policies on education, welfare, employment, housing and the rest into a patchwork quilt – but there is no stitching to make it a coherent whole.
Nothing will be done about growing inequality, and the relationship between inequality, social mobility and good social outcomes is simply not explored. Nothing will be done about inheritance and nothing will be done about people being able to buy privilege, so the rich private school elite will maintain its grip. Nothing will be done to reverse the cuts to the services that give poorer people some hope, like Sure Start and the Education Maintenance Allowance. And for Clegg to focus on changes to internships shows how threadbare this strategy is.
The document points out that housing makes up 42% of household wealth but there is no analysis of the role that housing might play in promoting greater social mobility and equality of opportunity. The same old Duncan-Smith-isms are trotted out: social housing somehow causes deprivation, there is a culture of dependency, people aspire to be home owners, and all the rest. The only thing I can see that might make any difference to social mobility is the (already announced) set of proposals to improve the geographic mobility of social tenants, but even that is outweighed by the failure to address supply.
Living in a decent warm affordable and secure home with enough space provides the platform on which all other opportunities are built. Health inequalities and educational inequalities are closely linked to housing opportunities. Children will find it hard to achieve if they have faced homelessness or overcrowding or living in cold damp conditions. Many of the government’s housing policies will make it harder for children and young people to succeed. For example, housing benefit will cover less and less of the rent, increasing real poverty and the risk of homelessness for many. Fewer tenants will have long term security in their home, the place where they build their lives.
The final proof, if any more was needed, that this is not a serious strategy, was provided by Clegg himself in an article in yesterday’s Telegraph. Writing jointly with Iain Duncan Smith, they say that the strategy is aimed at squeezed middle-class parents who are “working hard to make the best life possible for their children”. They go on: “Most of them are not poor, and certainly don’t want to rely on welfare payments. But nor are they rich enough to insulate their children against life’s misfortunes.”
Mr Clegg should note that there is more than a slight difference between insulating the middle classes and promoting social mobility.
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Yes, Grant, it is hypocrisy
The new financial year marks the introduction of some of the government’s most contentious housing policies, so you would expect government ministers to be focused on the major changes and their impact on millions of people. So what have Eric Pickles and Grant Shapps been up to, what are their key messages to the nation at this crucial time?
Well both have been extremely excited by the fact that some councils sent people to the Local Government Chronicle’s children’s services awards dinner at council expense. Personally, I don’t like such functions, all that dressing up in dark lounge suits and posh frocks, and think they should be held in a dusty town hall somewhere with municipal nibbles and compulsory hair shirts. But the ministers spotted a headline in the making: according to the Daily Mail, Pickles “condemned the councils for ‘pleading poverty’ while using public money to ‘swill champagne’ at London’s five-star Grosvenor House hotel.” Shapps accused the councils of “hypocrisy”.
One of the councils in attendance was Mr Cameron’s favourite of Hammersmith and Fulham, who sent the Leader, the Chief Executive and 4 other officials, according to the Mail. But they seemed to think it was ok because the bill was picked up by the council’s IT supplier Agilysys. Another council offered the defence that their attendance was paid for by Capita and Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Not a word about these sponsorships from our deadly duo. As the government is embarking on a new era of compulsory competitive tendering for services, some may think it is even more scandalous for councils to be accepting gifts from private companies who have lucrative contracts with them and may be bidding for many more in the future.
And, of course, Pickles and Shapps never eat at anyone else’s expense, do they? I’m sure Pickles never touched the grub or the liquid refreshment at the British Curry Awards or at the County Council Network Dinner, amongst several required to be declared by this scourge of the freebies. Shapps is either an abstemious sort of chap or he doesn’t get many invitations, I suspect the latter, but he did have dinner with the House Builders’ Federation, who might be regarded as having a vested interest in the department’s work.
Not satisfied with his day’s work, Shapps then set off in pursuit of a ‘union baron’ in the shape of Bob Crow, who was ‘accused’ of living in social housing and, according to Shapps, is “taking advantage of publicly subsidised housing.” (unfortunately the original story is behind the Sunday Times paywall, so I have to rely on secondary reports).
Now why the Housing Minister feels free to comment on the housing status of individuals is beyond me. Normally I don’t comment on such matters but I suspect Mr Shapps is an owner occupier and “takes advantage” of a number of hidden public subsidies to the sector like exemption from capital gains tax. According to the Telegraph he may not need public subsidy anyway because “He is the multi-millionaire minister with his own private plane” who has “taken to sleeping on a camp bed in his parliamentary office.” I wonder if they charge hostel rates?
Meanwhile, over at RMT a spokesperson said: “Bob Crow makes no apology for living in social housing at the heart of his local community. Bob was born into a council house and has lived in one all his life, and actually turned down a union mortgage in favour of remaining a tenant. Bob also turned down the right to buy his council house at a discount, as he believes social housing stock should remain available for future generations.’
I don’t agree with Bob about much, but at least someone in this tale has some principles.
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The tide of destruction
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has been busy recently, what with the huge march and rally for the alternative on Saturday.
So it was good to see him taking time today to comment on the government’s decision to bring forward to January 2012 the new rule that single adults up to the age of 34 will be eligible only for the single room rate of local housing allowance.
Brendan focused on the risk of homelessness. He said: ‘This reform runs the risk of increasing homelessness among young people as many will have their benefit entitlement significantly reduced. There is almost no chance that all of these people will be able to find alternative accommodation at affordable rents. With unemployment still rising and the housing crisis deepening, the government seems intent on piling on the financial pain for young adults.’
The government has been happy to keep the debate about housing benefit/local housing allowance changes focused on the largest families receiving the highest amounts of benefit in the highest value areas, especially in central London. But the changes will hit hard at all kinds of tenants all over the country, as the tables produced by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) show clearly, and they will hit single young people between the ages of 25 and 34 severely. You can see figures for your local area here.
The tables show for each area (Broad Rental Market Area in the jargon) what the difference is between the current 1 bed rate and the single room rate and also how the rates will be affected by the switch from being assessed on the 50th percentile – ie the median rent in an area – and the new rule that they will be based on the 30th percentile.
So a single person aged between 25 and 34 would currently be eligible for the 1 bed rate at up to the 50th percentile rent; in future (ie over the next year) they would be entitled to the single room rent at the 30th percentile. The figures will change as market rents change, but on current calculations a single person age 25-34 living on Tyneside would be entitled to a 1 bed rate of £97 a week and after the changes would only be entitled to a single room rate of £58 a week. In southern Greater Manchester the drop will be from £103 to £56. In Leicester from £91 to £56. In north west London from £178 to £80.
In theory the 30th percentile rule means that 30% of properties in an area will be ‘affordable’ for claimants. In practice the cheapest 30% are already occupied and people having to leave their existing accommodation will have to compete for vacancies as they arise. Not only is this likely to force rents at the lower end up (not down as the government ridiculously claims) but there will be a flood of 25-34 year olds seeking to move and it is extremely unlikely, as Brendan comments, that there will be enough accommodation to go round. The risk of homelessness is great, and even if there is a scramble amongst landlords to convert larger houses into shared accommodation there will then be knock-on effect on families.
As Brendan said at the rally at the weekend, ‘We’ve come together not just to oppose the cuts, but to call for a new approach to rebuilding our economy rooted in social justice, in place of this tide of economic destruction.’ Quite.
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Institutional chaos
The Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation, David Orr, spoke last week about the ‘institutional chaos’ facing housing associations and the need to think carefully about balancing the needs of their business with their mission.
He said “You might take a strategic business view that the smart thing to do is wait until all the moving parts have settled down and not take any risks. But that is pretty disastrous in mission terms with the scale of the housing crisis.”
Housing associations (HAs) certainly face huge dilemmas in the current policy framework. It is no longer possible to build what is needed most – social rented housing at genuinely affordable rents – except in tiny numbers as a special case. So, if HAs with development programmes want to keep them going, and most are assembling their bids at the moment, there is little choice but to plan a mix of private housing, shared ownership and the new, grotesquely-named ‘Affordable Rent (AR)’ product (which is little different from the intermediate rent products we have seen before). Of course it can be argued that building almost any housing is useful given the current shortage, and AR at 80% of market rent is not that much different from social rents in those parts of the country with the lowest values. But everywhere else, the virtual removal of social renting from the mix totally disregards the needs of communities and the people on lowest incomes.
One thing HAs with a development programme can and must do is protect the existing stock of social rented homes when they become available for re-letting. The government wants them to re-let a share of their existing homes at AR rent levels to generate funding for new development. I think they should demonstrate their commitment to their mission, to borrow David Orr’s word, by refusing to do so and by re-letting these homes at social rent levels. Councils, in revising their housing strategies and setting their new ‘tenancy strategies’ under the Localism Bill, should set out their opposition to existing social rented homes being re-let at such high rents.
Lettings policies, already the art of getting a quart in to a pint pot, will come under even greater strain. Demand for homes that are re-let at social rents will increase as supply contracts even further. Who will the new AR tenancies at up to 80% market rents be allocated to? The government argues that the profile will be the same as those who currently get allocated social rented homes, but they also say that the new policy will not impact on the requirement for housing benefit – and they can’t have both of these. Higher rents require more housing benefit, as we have argued before and as Family Mosaic’s research showed. Once again their housing policy and their welfare reform agendas are in direct conflict.
HAs caught in the middle say quietly that this is an argument that the lenders may ultimately decide – they don’t like it when the tenants can’t pay their rents and this will be reflected in their risk assessments of new schemes. One middle course would be for HAs to refuse to set AR rent levels above the limit for Housing Benefit, irrespective of local market rent levels. That would reduce the yield but would keep the homes available for people on housing benefit. But, in higher value areas, it is the total benefits cap (rather than the housing benefit limit) that will prevent many tenants from being able to pay their rent. This will be reflected in the risk assessment for new schemes and the pressure will be on to let to people with sufficient income to be able to afford the rent.
So, there are dangers both ways. If AR homes are let to people on low incomes who would previously have qualified for a social rented home, then housing benefit spending will go up. If AR homes are let to people who can afford the higher rents, then people on lower incomes will be squeezed out and more will end up in private rented accommodation at higher rents with a higher requirement for HB support. Either way, there is likely to be upward pressure on HB spending: the government will have to find more money or look for more cuts. The prospects are grim.
In a recent post we covered the story of Westminster Council’s plans to introduce a new bye-law for the Victoria area of the city to ban street sleeping and soup runs.
Here, Nicky Gavron AM, Labour’s Spokesperson for Housing and Planning on the London Assembly, says that this ban is just one of many policies that will impact on homelessness.
The council made infamous by Shirley Porter is at it again, forcing people it considers undesirable out of the borough. In the eighties it was low income Labour-voting families; this time it’s some of society’s most vulnerable.
Westminster City Council’s pursuit of a byelaw to make it an offence to sleep rough and give away food in the most salubrious parts of the borough has been well documented.
Cllr Daniel Astaire, the council’s Cabinet Member for Society, Families and Adult Services audaciously told the Daily Mirror:
“Soup runs have no place in the 21st century. It is undignified that people are being fed on the streets. They actually encourage people to sleep rough with all the dangers that entails. Our priority is to get people off the streets altogether. We have a range of services that can help do that.”
But what Westminster councillors have not mentioned is that they are actively seeking to close the very hostels and services that help people off the streets and into a life of normality. One of these is the 100-plus bed Victoria Hostel in Castle Lane.
Westminster – like all borough councils – is given a budget to provide services for people in acute housing need, including rough sleepers. Most boroughs have had this budget cut, but Westminster has actually been given an increase – presumably in recognition of the need. And instead of using this extra money to carry out its legal and moral duty to help rough sleepers, it is slashing services and is prepared to waste police time and court resources by criminalising those who need help.
It’s difficult not to think that this is anything other than a cynical manoeuvre to turn Westminster into one big gated-community, and to seal it and its more well heeled residents off from a problem that’s getting worse across the city.
The combination of a stalling economy, rising unemployment, housing and benefit reforms will all conspire to push many more people into homelessness and increase levels of rough sleeping.
No assessment has been made by the government of the costs and impact of their housing and welfare reforms. The government’s total cap on benefits, which will hammer the budgets of families on low incomes, combined with their plan to raise social housing rents to 80 per cent of market rates will put intolerable stress on housing services in London.
Add to this the housing benefit reforms and the plan to make it easier for councils to discharge their homelessness duty, and the increase in rough sleeping seems inevitable.
Most damaging of all will be raising the age threshold for the Single Room Rate from 25 to 35. As one charity leader told me, rough sleepers will struggle to find normal shared housing. Forcing people to live together is a policy that has failed in the past and will fail again.
The Government must act now to stop rough sleeping getting worse. If it wants to convince us that these reforms are not ideologically driven, it must get tough with councils like Westminster by refusing this byelaw and reintroducing ring-fencing for those budgets that protect vulnerable people.
Without this, there is little the Mayor’s London Delivery Board on rough sleeping will be able to do to hold back the tide.
Most crucial of all, the government must rethink its housing and benefit reforms. As they stand they will lead to social segregation on an unprecedented scale – and rough sleeping is just the tip of the iceberg.
You can follow Nicky Gavron on Twitter at twitter.com/nickygavron. This article also appeared in Inside Housing magazine.
Tony obviously spent much of the weekend counting up the number of housing reviews and commissions taking place at the moment for his post yesterday. One of those he listed has already produced some interesting research for its launch event last week – the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr) fundamental review of housing policy.
The project, led by Andy Hull, Senior Research Fellow ([email protected]) will have four streams of work. It will look at housing’s role in the economy and how housing could play a less destabilising part in the macro-economy; housing supply and how to meet the projected increase in housing demand between now and 2025; housing allocation and use, and how to achieve a fairer and more efficient use of the housing stock we have; and housing management, looking mainly at the need to professionalise the private rented sector and encourage mixed communities.
The project’s first report on housing demand to 2025 presents a detailed model for estimating the number of households in each region requiring homes, which as they rightly say, should underpin the development of housing and planning policy. The model looks at how housing demand might vary according to changes in the growth path of the economy – the good, the bad and the ugly as they call their various economic growth scenarios.
This is a detailed and slightly techie read, but the headlines are clearly presented. Housing demand will outstrip supply by 750,000 by 2025 ‘equivalent to the combined current housing demand of Birmingham, Liverpool and Newcastle’. Between 3.3 million and 4.5 million additional households will be formed by 2025. Household growth will vary by region, with the fastest growth expected to continue to be in the South East and London, but even in the region with least pressure, the North West, the increase in overall housing demand relative to current demand will be in the range 9–15 per cent: ippr say there will be ‘a substantial imbalance in the supply and demand of housing in all regions’.
The demand for homes in the different tenures is seen to be closely linked to economic performance – the poorer the performance, the greater the demand for social rented homes. The demand for social rented homes (supply of which the government has just reduced to zero in the future) will still be high under all scenarios.
It will be worth keeping an eye out for further publications and events by ippr as the research progresses.
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Changing the borrowing rules (part 26)
A rare opportunity to welcome an initiative by a bundle of ten councils of all political persuasions – Tory, LibDem, Lab and NOC – arose this week. The issue is an old one on which a dedicated band of experts have campaigned for 20 years or more. And the question is whether George Osborne is any more likely to listen than any of his predecessors as Chancellor. My feeling is not because the tradition of orthodoxy runs deep at HM treasury.
Changing the borrowing rules has been a celebrated cause, where everyone except the people who matter most, in Whitehall, favours change. In essence, in the UK borrowing to invest in council houses has been included in the main measure of public sector borrowing, and therefore subject to strict control. Other countries especially in the Eurozone, do things differently, and we could count council housing and other public corporate activities as separate trading activities where borrowing is determined by the business plan of the organisation involved and its revenue streams – and governed by the prudential code – rather than being controlled by an artificial national count of all debt that only the Brits use.
Detailed work led by the CIH in the 1990s (their report was entitled ‘Challenging the Conventions’) led to high hopes that the new Labour Government would change the rules. Some adjustments were made, mainly with the prudential borrowing regime, which helped, but the breakthrough never arrived. The research for the CIH report was undertaken by the (then) leading Coopers and Lybrand accountancy company, now part of PWC. They then did follow-up research with financial institutions, revealing in a second report called ‘Consensus for Change’ that the City was wholly relaxed about the proposed revision to borrowing measures and that it might lead to over £1 billion of extra investment being available for council housing.
This new initiative, supported by councils from all over the country as well as all political persuasions, takes the campaign into yet another decade. They assert that the change would not affect UK credit ratings, would ease unemployment in construction, and would help deliver the Government’s aspiration to build more homes during this spending review period. Their current estimate is also that an additional £1bn could be raised for investment in new housing.
HM Treasury being what it is, silence will probably be the response. I don’t think they have ever issued a serious rebuttal of the arguments. Time will tell, but some of us have already grown old and grey waiting for this sensible reform.