Category: Blog Post

Under-occupation – the market solution?

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 25, 2011

Steve Hilditch

Founder of Red Brick. Former Head of Policy for Shelter. Select Committee Advisor for Housing and Homelessness. Drafted the first London Mayor’s Housing Strategy under Ken Livingstone. Steve sits on the Editorial Panel of Red Brick.

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A lot more is said than done about the issue of under-occupation of social rented homes.

Grant Shapps has allocated a piddling sum of £13m amongst the 50 councils with the largest numbers of under-occupiers. Of course it is a move in the right direction, if a small one, and the linked announcement that a central unit will be set up in the Chartered Institute of Housing should be a valuable resource supporting local initiatives.

Ministers say there are 430,000 under-occupied social homes in England – where tenants have two or more bedrooms more than they require (against the ‘bedroom standard’). I support the focus on tenants with 2+ additional bedrooms because tenants with one spare room over the rather ancient ‘bedroom standard’ do not regard themselves as under-occupiers.

With an estimated 258,000 social renters living in overcrowded conditions, simplistic arguments are sometimes made that the problem could be ‘solved’ if selfish older tenants were stopped from blocking social homes needed for larger families. Calls for draconian action of some kind to require under-occupiers to move to smaller accommodation seem to have been rejected – the government says it has “accepted the basic right of older tenants to stay in their homes, and that policies of encouragement are better than those of coercion….. Ministers are clear that they will not force people to move – but want to provide a helping hand to those wanting to do so.”

Just like older home owners, older tenants have often raised their families in these homes and are emotionally attached to them, still have many family visitors, are part of the local community, have neighbourhood support networks, and now have time to enjoy the garden if they have one. They have probably paid for the property a few times over in rent, and now contribute through rent pooling to the cost of homes elsewhere.

Bespoke solutions are needed, with landlords who know their tenants talking with them individually and devising a solution that meets their needs and preferences. It might involve financial incentives, a choice of suitable alternatives in preferred locations, and practical support with moving and other arrangements. We need far more schemes like the London Seaside and Country Homes scheme, offering tenants genuine retirement opportunities if that is their choice. It is regrettable that financial incentives to downsize have been cut back in many places – I suspect by an amount many times greater than Mr Shapps’ new fund.

Mr Shapps says that he wants to “make it easier for those tenants wanting to move from larger family homes to smaller, more manageable homes, to do so.” But where, exactly, are these homes? Like people who are being decanted for development, older tenants realise that they have a little bit of negotiating strength for once. They will only accept somewhere smaller if it is in some way better or suits their needs more than their current home. The right to buy and the failure to reinvest mean that there are many fewer smaller dwellings on the ground floor in good locations with access to outside space. Many top class sheltered housing schemes have had their onsite wardens removed due to changes in the Supporting People regime. There is little new development. As in so many other areas, supply and short-sighted funding regimes are the barriers to a sensible policy.

Now for the warning. Everything is not always what it seems with this government. We should not forget the analysis of Mr Shapps’ friends at Localis. In their report on social housing reform, which pointed the way to many of this government’s policies, they argued for a market approach not a change in powers:

“There has been a number of calls for Landlords to gain more power to require tenants to move to more appropriately sized accommodation to deal with under-occupation. Whilst such powers would assist with this problem, the move to market rents and personal subsidy would, in our view, address this in a more fundamental way as under-occupancy will become more expensive for tenants as their rents, but not their housing benefit, rise.”

We have had a number of policy shifts in this direction already, both through rents policy and housing benefit. Call me cynical but, despite the warm words, I think this is the real agenda.

Tags Social tenant, Under-occupation

Blog Post

For one day only, I agree with Nick

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 19, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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It became a catchphrase during the Election TV debates and I haven’t found a lot to agree with Nick Clegg about since the coalition took over. But, just as Red Brick agreed with Grant Shapps when he made sensible remarks about the need for a period of stable and not inflationary house prices, now it is time to agree with Nick in his comments about the extension of the Freedom of Information legislation.

Labour had plans to extend the FoI to cover some additional agencies (such as University admissions services and the Association of Chief Police Officers) which the current government is also going to pursue, but Clegg spoke about going much further and my ears pricked up when ‘housing associations’ got a mention. Since FoI came in, we have had the strange position where the regulators (Housing Corporation then Tenant Services Authority) were covered by FoI but the organisations they regulated were not.

Clegg said that “Free citizens must be able to hold big institutions and powerful individuals to account…… There are a whole range of organisations who benefit from public money and whose activities have a profound impact on the public good….. citizens must first know what goes on in these institutions. ”

It is Clegg’s suggestion that private bodies performing ‘functions of a public nature’ should be covered by FoI that catches housing associations – although careful definition will be required to avoid any suggestion that the change might trigger the re-classification of housing associations as public bodies (thereby running the risk that their loans – around £40bn – might transfer to the public sector balance sheet). The FoI Campaign has argued for years that private providers of health and social care and other public services should be subject to the Act – which contains safeguards around information that might be commercially sensitive. As Clegg says, there should be a simple rule that organisations that benefit from public money should be subject to public scrutiny.

I suspect that housing associations are probably no better and no worse than most bodies that are subject to the FoI already. But non-disclosure and a lack of public scrutiny can make organisations too cosy in their internal procedures, and then it is easy to fall into bad habits. Public scrutiny (especially through Inside Housing’s annual survey and league table) has made a difference to housing associations that had a penchant for paying over the odds for their senior staff. But I think they are often unnecessarily secretive, for example many do not publish routine information like non-confidential Board papers. Tenants often complain that they cannot get hold of financial and other information that council tenants get routinely from their landlords. And you hear the occasional story about Chief Executives’ expenses, posh dinners and trips abroad….. all of which should see the light of day.

I argued unsuccessfully to the TSA that the principles of FoI should be part of the new regulatory code, thereby avoiding the need for an extension of the legislation. That didn’t happen, and now regulation itself will be severely restricted (Clegg got that one wrong), so the only way forward is to extend the Act. The principle has to be right, the risks can be avoided, and I don’t accept the line that it will involve ‘too much work’. If it also helps change the culture of some HAs, it might have the added benefit of making the government’s plans for tenant scrutiny more effective.

Tags Freedom of information, Housing association

Blog Post

Right to transfer

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 17, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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Attracting virtually no comment at the time it was passed, an obscure clause in Labour’s 2008 Housing and Regeneration Act could offer council tenants a unique but controversial way of owning and running their own homes.

Section 34A, as it is known, requires a local authority to co-operate with a formal notice from a tenant group to transfer ownership of council homes and estates to them. The government has decided to press forward with making regulations under the section and has branded it the right to transfer. A draft is expected in February.

As a policy, S34A is a direct descendant of the Tenants Choice legislation that was introduced by the Conservatives in 1988. The political belief at the time was that tenants would rise up to take control of their housing from Labour councils who ran their housing badly. In practice, and famously, it was used by Walterton & Elgin Community Homes (WECH) to take over their estates when Westminster Council, led by Shirley Porter, tried to sell them to developers. As it didn’t lead to the hoped-for tenants’ revolt in Labour areas, and caused embarrassment in Westminster, it was repealed in the mid 1990s.

WECH is still going strong, a leading example of tenant control working in practice. Based on its experiences, the organisation has become a strong advocate of the principle that genuine empowerment through community ownership and control can lead to measureable improvements in happiness and wellbeing.

The right to transfer is seen by the ConDems as furthering both Localism and the Big Society. So we have Labour legislation and ConDem implementation, does this mean there is a consensus that the right to transfer is a good thing? The left has often been divided on the issues of tenant control and, in particular, tenant ownership. The co-operative and mutual traditions run deep, but there has often been hostility to moving ownership out of the public sector and away from traditional democratic control. Is transfer from a council to collective tenant ownership and control ‘privatisation’ or a different form of socialised ownership? I go for the latter as long as the model does not allow for private gain (as some earlier co-ownership models did) and the homes are properly used to meet housing need.

There are of course dangers to negotiate. If tenants wish to transfer part of a local authority’s stock to their ownership, coming out of the housing revenue account is hugely complex and has risks for both sides. Other major issues to deal with include the viability of the new tenant organisation and the long-term relationship with the parent authority over issues like allocations and future development.

The right to transfer will also cause bigger political divisions in the Conservative Party. In Hammersmith and Fulham, normally the incubator of Tory housing policy, tenants on estates threatened by demolition as part of the huge Earls Court redevelopment have already served notice that they want to take over their estates, potentially scuppering the council’s plans to reduce the amount of social housing in the borough. Will the government be willing to effectively overrule the Prime Minister’s favourite council to pursue its policy?

Given the need for the Labour Party to develop a new stance on housing, my own view is that Ed Miliband and the housing front bench should support tenants interested in using this new power.

PS – In legislative technicalities, S296 of the Housing & Regeneration Act 2008 introduced a new Section 34A to the 1985 Housing Act.

Tags Council housing, Tenant control

Blog Post

Action on neighbours from hell ‘a chocolate teapot’?

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 14, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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Yet another attempt at populism by Mr Shapps with his announcement that ‘neighbours from hell’ will face faster eviction under ‘radical plans’ to introduce a new additional mandatory ground for possession against social tenants, under which tenants with a track record of anti-social behaviour can be evicted from their council or housing association property much more quickly. At its core, the proposal means that being found guilty of housing related anti-social behaviour in one court will provide automatic grounds for eviction in the county court, removing the need to prove the incidents of anti-social behaviour for a second time.

So far so good, it would be hard to find a stronger consensus on any issue than the one in support of tackling anti-social behaviour quickly and effectively.

However, m’learned friends at the consistently excellent Nearly Legal website take a different view. And, as NL says, it is housing lawyers who will have to make sense of this when court cases follow.

So what are their key points?

First, NL say that a criminal conviction would already be incontestable as a fact in civil possession proceedings – there is no need for something to be ‘proved again’ on a possession claim at all.

Secondly, they see definitional problems. Mr Shapps says the new mandatory ground will follow a tenant being found guilty of ‘housing related anti-social behaviour’ – but, say NL, that “covers a lot of ground, from the minor but annoying to the very serious indeed. And ‘found guilty’ – does this mean a conviction in the Magistrates or Crown Court? Or the Magistrates making an ASBO or ASBI?”

Thirdly, they see problems in the word ‘mandatory’, which due to a case called Pinnock, is a bit more of a tricky concept than it used to be and not as certain as Mr Shapps would like.

Fourthly, they say there is little if any evidence that non-mandatory possession proceedings are what is getting in the way of dealing with the problem, even in the dreadful ASB cases quoted in Mr Shapps’ press release.

NL places the problem closer to home, and in particular the failure of some landlords and the police to take more effective and joined up action against perpetrators or to support victims, and the lack of dedicated funding. So, they conclude, “Unless existing powers are actually used (and the dedicated joined-up ASB teams funded), the fact that there may be a kind of mandatory possession proceeding .. is going to make no practical difference to the situation at all, as there will be as few ‘housing related ASB’ prosecutions as there are now, or even fewer.”

Mr Shapps announcement is therefore, they say, “a chocolate teapot”.

PS – another sceptical lawyer writes on 24 Dash – see here http://www.24dash.com/news/housing/2011-01-14-Lawyer-in-warning-over-fast-track-evicitons-under-ASBO-reforms

Tags Anti-social behaviour, Security of tenure, Social tenant

Blog Post

Social housing investment peaks then plummets

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 11, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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An early glimpse into the new edition of the UK Housing Review, to be published at the start of February, reveals that investment in social housing has reached its highest level for 20 years but is due to plummet again when the cuts take effect in April 2011.

The review describes how overall gross social housing investment in Great Britain rose again in 2009/10, to the highest level in real terms for almost 20 years – up by over 80 per cent since the previous decade. The strongest annualised growth was seen in Scotland. Taking account of all private finance investment, the Review concludes that “the last two years have seen overall investment in social housing at its highest sustained level (in real terms) for three decades”.

“Going right back to the 1970s, in only in one earlier year – 1989/90 – was expenditure higher. This resulted from a coincidence of exceptional factors – peaking right to buy receipts in the late 1980s housing market boom, together with landlord action to pre-empt government spending restrictions that were announced before they took effect.”

For the Chartered Institute of Housing, which trailed the Review this week, Director of Policy and Practice Richard Capie said: “The last two years have seen record investment in social housing across Britain, both from central government and importantly through private finance. This allowed the provision of more homes, essential community regeneration and important improvements in existing homes. We have now entered a very different era, with 50 per cent cuts in cash terms to housing budgets in England and around 19 per cent in Scotland. We are in the midst of a housing crisis with fewer than half the homes we need being built. This latest research shows the sheer scale of the dramatic cuts we are now seeing in new housing. These are a body blow to first time buyers, low income households and the construction sector.”

Figures on cuts to housing investment for 2011-14 for England are taken from the National Affordable Housing Programme which was £8.4bn in 2008-11 and will be £4.5bn in the three years from 2011/12. Accounting for the inclusion of mortgage rescue and the recovery of empty homes this represents a cash terms cut of 50 per cent. In Scotland the draft budget prefigures a cut in housing and regeneration spending from £488m to £393m, a cash cut of 19 per cent. The Scottish Federation of Housing Associations estimates that allowance for spending brought forward in 2010/11 means that the real reduction in 2011/12 will be over 30 per cent.

The starkness of the figures adds strength to the points made by Tony in his post on how the anti-recession stimulus is running out with potentially dire consequences for the construction sector of the economy.

The website of the UK Housing Review is http://www.york.ac.uk/res/ukhr/index.htm 2010-11 and contains a wealth of statistical and financial information about housing in the UK. It is edited by Professors Steve Wilcox and Hal Pawson.

Tags Housing investment

Blog Post

Is keeping your house empty a human right?

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 8, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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In previous posts we highlighted the bizarre examples used in the government’s advice on how to deal with squatters, especially what to do if your home is squatted whilst out walking the dog. Bernard Crofton recalled that the dog example originated as an ironic comment made at a meeting many years ago. From his Freedom of Information request, it seems no such examples actually exist and, even if they did, the government wouldn’t know because it keeps no data on such cases.

It was with this in mind that I read the 7 January announcement by Secretary of State Eric Pickles that he planned to heavily restrict the use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMO), introduced by Labour to take action on properties that have been empty for 6 months or more.

Once again the justification for the policy is punctuated by colourful and extreme examples. Pickles said it was wrong that a bereaved family could face having their loved one’s home seized under an EDMO, and quoted examples of councils attempting to use the powers against someone caring for an injured daughter abroad and a 96 year old who had passed away in a nursing home.

These examples would indeed be extraordinary if true, and CLG will shortly receive an FoI request seeking more information about them. What is known is that only 44 EDMOs have been made since the law came into effect in 2006. Councils would indeed have to be out to lunch to have focused on such cases given how many empty homes there are to choose from.

Let me be clear: just as I disapprove of people squatting properties when homeowners are walking their dogs, I also disapprove of councils making EDMOs against ‘people in vulnerable situations’ as Mr Pickles calls them, or when a property is empty for good reason.

Having compulsorily purchased quite a lot of empty homes in a previous life (indeed under the Thatcher government) I know that owners get into complex positions especially if a relative has died intestate. Back then the owners would be given lots of opportunities to bring their properties back into use, and the same is true today with EDMOs. But the very fact that the council intervened and was willing to take strong action meant that many properties were brought back into use without any formal action being taken. The threat was taken seriously. Owners will see Pickles’ soft soap policy and laugh when the council comes calling.

The real reason for Pickles’ change is ideological: “The Coalition Government is standing up for the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens. Fundamental human rights include the right to property” he said. More important, it seems than the human rights of the homeless.

Pickles clearly has little understanding of the damage empty properties can do to neighbourhoods in a very short space of time. In future he will only allow EDMOs to be used where there has been vandalism or squatters and other forms of anti-social behaviour, and action can only be taken after the property has been empty for two years. So an owner will be able to keep a property empty in a vandalised state, a blight on the neighbourhood, for 2 years before the council can take EDMO enforcement action.

I hope councils will object strongly, both to the stupidity of the new policy and to the demeaning nature of the argument for introducing it.

Tags Civil liberties, Empty homes

Blog Post

March of the Meanies

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 5, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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A Day in the Life of Ministers in and around Communities and Local Government. On January 3^rd, Housing Minister Grant Shapps took action to prevent the demolition of a single house in Liverpool, occupied from the age of 0-4 by one Richard Starkey, later a drummer in a band. “Let It Be” trumpeted Mr Shapps in the CLG press release. More like Back in the USSR.

Meanwhile, just along the corridor, Bungalow Bill* (played by E Pickles) was condemning, in the strongest possible terms, “Whitehall’s addiction to micromanagement” whilst ending requirements limiting car parking spaces in new developments, alongside his friend, Lovely Rita, meter maid (aka Transport Minister Philip Hammond), who was removing restrictions on councils’ parking charge regimes. CLG didn’t risk calling the policy Drive My Car.

All I can say is Help. And Run For Your Life.

*John Lennon said that “‘Bungalow Bill’ was written about a man at the Maharishi’s meditation centre who went off to shoot a few tigers then came back to commune with God.

Tags Department for Communities and Local Government

Blog Post

We need Isambard and a tin hat

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date January 3, 2011

Steve Hilditch

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As Tony suggests in his post I agree with Grant, Grant Shapps deserves (begrudging) respect for raising the importance of achieving long term house price stability, but I hope he has his tin hat on in anticipation of the reaction in some parts of the media. The Mail has already highlighted Shapps’ own personal property dealings as they smell ‘hypocrisy’. Of course, never one to miss a political trick himself, Shapps also tries to pretend that house price hyper-inflation came in with the Labour government in 1997, whereas all the key trends and policies, long booms followed by a sharp and damaging busts, have been in place for a couple of generations now.

The real problem is that I can’t see anything in his or the government’s philosophy that might lead to the necessary actions being taken to bring house price stability about. The Mail quotes Shapps as saying that homeowners should no longer rely on their houses to fund their retirement and that ministers were hoping to engineer an era of ‘house price stability’ in which property values would gradually be eroded by rising earnings.

‘Engineering’ a market seems rather at odds with everything else they stand for.

Indeed rather a lot of extremely heavy engineering projects would be required to achieve long term price stability. We may need the housing equivalent ofIsambard Kingdom Brunel because all of them are hard to achieve.

The first is a better balance of supply and demand, which will need policies to massively increase the rate at which new homes are built over a sustained period of time, more than a decade. With the regional planning framework scrapped, and huge cuts in infrastructure investment, this seems a forlorn hope to me.

The second is the stable supply of mortgage funds on sensible terms, targeted towards the cheaper end of the new build market, to encourage developers to produce more affordable homes. This will require a stiffer attitude towards regulation than this government promises and lenders are used to.

The third is to tackle land prices and not just house prices – the problem in many places is not the cost of construction, but the price of the land – which can probably only be done through some kind of land value tax, not natural territory for any of the main political parties.

And fourth, we need a stronger safety net for home owners when interest rates spike or redundancy strikes – Labour’s policies during the credit crunch were a good start in this direction. Stable or falling prices need to be accompanied by reduced risk for individual households.

At the bottom of it the hardest change to make will be in attitudes. A good home ownership market is vitally important, but it will fail if it is regarded as the only tenure that brings status and respect, or as a get rich quick scheme or a proxy pensions market or even a place to bung the latest bankers bonus. The core business should be about delivering reasonably-priced homes to people on reasonable incomes, and shared ownership to people on ‘intermediate’ incomes who want it. But the market will still fail unless we have a better understanding of the relationship between tenures. A balanced housing market needs far more renting as well as more homes built for sale, so people at all income levels have real choice at different stages in their lives and are not forced into debt that they cannot sustain.

More care is needed with the language of ‘aspiration’, which has become synonymous with wanting home ownership. Of course many people would like to own their own home if they can afford it, but the aspirational classes may well give higher priority in future to getting their children through college and protecting their retirement.

These are real challenges not just for Grant Shapps but also for Labour’s housing policy review when it gets under way. It would be nice if a new consensus was emerging that enabled serious long term policy options to be discussed rationally, but I suspect the odds are against.

Tags Home ownership, Housing market

Blog Post

A Christmas Carol (in prose)

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date December 29, 2010

A guest post for Xmas from Bernard Crofton adding a seasonal spin on a topic previously reported on Red Brick here.

A Christmas Carol (in prose)…… being a …….. ghost story for Christmas.

In November of 2010, the two government departments facing amongst the biggest budget cuts, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Ministry of Justice, issued a new guidance leaflet : “Advice on dealing with squatters in your home” available as a pdf download from http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/advicesquatters, where there is a helpful summary as well :-

There are an estimated 20,000 squatters in the UK. This guidance is aimed at homeowners and to make them aware of their rights where their property has been unlawfully occupied. It has been jointly produced with the Ministry of Justice which makes clear that it is an offence for a squatter to fail to leave a residential property when required to do so by or on behalf of either a displaced residential occupier or certain other occupiers whose interest in the premises is protected under the legislation.

That stirred some queasy questions about the “new” advice; mainly “Why?” and “Why now? “ .

However, when I clicked and the pdf started its weary download, I heard the rattling of chains in the cellar. Surely Jacob Marley has been dead these seven years (or 17 since the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994).

The Advice starts with these words:

“What can I do if my home has been taken over by squatters?

1 If you return from holiday or walking the dog to find squatters in your home and they refuse to leave, you can call the police and report a criminal offence. “

I was fascinated by the imagery. Mainly because part of it was mine, come back to haunt me. I was among the local government representatives consulted by the Home Office about the legislation. Actually the law, as laws of that era went, ended up quite fair. I never met any supporter of squatting who thought squatters should be able to move into an occupied dwelling and effectively evict the occupants. Nor did I ever find a case where this had happened. Canvassing round the councils in London (where statistically almost all the squatting in the UK was concentrated) we couldn’t find a single case where that was alleged to have happened.

We found a few cases where home-owners were trying to repair a newly acquired empty property before moving in, and it being squatted while undeniably unoccupied. We found very many parallel examples on council estates (and I managed a tenth of that national 20,000 squats figure) But the pubIic debate had far more of the tang of the illegal immigrants debate It was about scroungers and spongers but with a more direct threat: they wouldn’t just take your money indirectly through the tax system, they would take your home and all that was in it!

One newspaper (I think of it as being the Daily Mail but I may just be prejudiced) ran a tale of a family returning from holiday to find their home squatted. “Vox populi” in the neighbourhood were said to be frightened to leave their homes unattended in case squatters moved in. We tried to find this example. The local council, where it reportedly occurred, only came up with a couple who lived abroad and owned several rented properties in the UK, one of which they found squatted on a visit back to the UK. They were certainly neither “displaced residential occupiers” nor “protected intending occupiers” of the property.

So in discussions with the civil servants I pointed out that if I went out to walk the dog and found someone in my home when I returned, I would not find the Police reluctant to act on straightforward “breaking and entering” or even malicious damage grounds. My sarcasm was effective. That “walking the dog” phrase alongside the “returning from holiday” one became shorthand for the fact the legislation was an over-reaction or a pandering to right wing prejudices. I still do not believe any owner-occupier was ever “displaced” by squatters while the kettle was still warm, or as Confucius say “swinging chain, warm seat”.

The issue, as local government and voluntary sector consultees all argued, was the time it took to get to court to repossess a squatted property. Ironically,court waiting-times meant that if you bought an empty house that was immediately squatted, you were kept out of it for the full term of that other brilliant invention of the era: the shorthold tenancy. So the law was eventually drafted to include the situations of both “a displaced residential occupier” and a “protected intending occupier” of the property. And rather than put resources into reducing court waiting lists we got the “interim possession order”.

Now I never rule out the possibility there really was a case where people left their home to go on holiday and found it squatted on returning. I never completely rule out the possibility that somewhere there is a Big-issue seller who gets into his Rolls Royce at the end of the day. But I never met one remotely near that bracket, and so I remain sceptical. But as for home-owners being squatted while out for a walk with the dog, I never heard anyone ever suggest it has happened – except me as a sarcastic example of the hysteria over squatters.

Suddenly at the end of 2010, I find the example heading a new advice leaflet, not just from one but two government departments. So I wrote to them both under the Freedom of Information Act (we didn’t have that when the 1994 Act was proposed, it was up to us to produce our own statistics). I asked:“Please supply me with any statistical information held or viewed by the Department or its predecessors, as to the number of owner-occupiers who have found squatters in their homes: a) on returning from holiday; b) after walking their dog.”

DCLG were first to respond, with the classic line from Fawlty Towers “ I know nuzzing”. The Ministry of Justice were more helpful. The person with “responsibility for answering requests in the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) which relate to civil (non family) law and housing possession related statistics which are to be handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)” told me :

“I can confirm that the Department does not hold the information you have requested. MOJ does not record property owners or property occupiers who have found that whilst away from the property, for whatever reason, that it has been occupied by squatters.”

After advising me of the rights of the un-numbered disposed occupiers, he helpfully provided the following table which he was not obliged to do under FOI, as it did not directly answer my question. He hoped it would be of use to me, so I am using it below. He warned me :

Table 1 below shows the number of Interim Possession Orders and Possession Orders against trespassers made in the county courts of England and Wales for the past full five years. Please read the footnotes underneath the table which describe how the data were compiled. Please note in particular that the figures include cases where properties were occupied by types of trespassers other than squatters (figures for squatters alone could only be determined by inspecting individual case files at a disproportionate cost), involving non-residential properties; and also that not all such orders given result in actual repossession of a property from a trespasser.

Table 1 Number of possession orders and interim possession orders given for trespass in the county courts of England and Wales, 2005-2009

Possession orders Interim possession orders

2005 929 117

2006 1036 114

2007 752 154

2008 626 164

2009 653 136

Source HMCS manual returns

Notes:

1. Data from 2005 to March 2009 were gathered from the Dept’s Management Information System. Data from April 2009 were collected from the courts online data monitoring system One Performance Truth

2. Quality assurance checks have been carried out to remove outliers. However these decisions have not been verified by contact with the courts. These figures should therefore be treated with caution.

3. Orders against trespassers and IPOs can be given for the possession of both commercial and residential properties from trespassers.

4. Not all orders and interim orders given for possession against trespassers relate to properties that are occupied by squatters.

5. Not all possession and interim possession orders result in actual repossession of a property from a trespasser.

Now let’s ignore that the table includes squatted shop-units etc. and that not all trespassers are squatters. The table shows possession orders against trespassers (I recall the definition used to be “against persons who entered as trespassers” but that mayhave changed).

I conclude from this table the following.

The number of full orders has declined significantly in the last five years.

The number of interim orders has started to decline, after a rise.

That at the current rate of full orders it would take 30 years to remove the current number of squatters….if there were no new cases.

That at the current rate of interim (i.e. urgent?) orders it would take nearly 150 years.

No one seems in a hurry.

Is it me or is there something odd about the emergence of this new governmental advice from financially strapped departments just in time for the Xmas season? Conspiracy theories are accepted, but any genuine leaks as to why this ghost has been disturbed would be especially welcome.

Bernard Crofton

Tags Department for Communities and Local Government, Squatting

Blog Post

The ghost of Christmas yet to come

Post author By Steve Hilditch
Post date December 22, 2010

Steve Hilditch

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We don’t often link to the Telegraph on Red Brick. But the sting operation against leading Liberal Democrats has had a focus on one of our favourite topics – housing benefit.

So here is what Business Minister Ed Davey actually said to the undercover reporters on this topic. Hear the tape here.

“Well, their housing benefit cuts, for example, which are going to mean in my view if they go through that some people on the breadline will be put below the breadline. And that’s just deeply unacceptable. There is (sic) five changes to housing benefit, and there are two which I find are unsupportable. One which will come in in 2010-13 where if you were unemployed for 12 months and you still were passing the working test which is actively seeking work – to get jobseekers allowance, which is about £80 a week, something like that, so you can eat you will have to show that you are looking for work…… I don’t understand why you are on the breadline, you’ve been trying to look for work, you’ve been passing all the government tests, and you’re suddenly going to have your rent, which is your highest cost, your help with that, taken down by 10 per cent. No logic behind that whatsoever…. We spend too much on it. It’s pushed up rents and landlords, rich landlords, are getting their pockets filled. So the system doesn’t work, but I don’t think you kick people when they’re down.”

Contrast that with the pugnacious and ever so slightly pompous Mr Davey’s attack on Chris Bryant and Boris Johnson on BBC’s Question Time in October for using the word ‘cleansing’ to describe the housing benefit changes. He said:

“Chris and Boris Johnson should apologise. The language they are using is appalling and I think it is scaremongering and I think their analysis is completely wrong. And I’ll tell you why it’s appalling. I have Kosovan asylum seekers in my constituency who really were ethnically cleansed ….. what is being proposed is nothing of the sort, you should use temperate language and have a moderate and grown up and adult debate…. People will find that 790,000 social homes in London will be completely unaffected. They will find that the vast majority of housing benefit recipients across the country will be unaffected. And yes there will be some but we have increased massively the fund that will assist if there are problems to £140m. And even those people who will be affected, they will be able to find that up to a third of private rented sector homes in London still affordable under housing benefit. Now I’m afraid you are being factually wrong and pandering to people’s sentiment when we’re actually putting in a sensible policy….. The real issue here is that we are proposing after all these changes the state will still subsidise up to £20,000 a year rent in the private sector – £400 a week”.

A few facts

– Many social tenants will be affected by the 10% cut in jobseekers allowance, uprating benefits at less then RPI, and the increase in rents for some tenancies to 80% market rents

– The £21,000 a year cap is irrelevant to most private tenants. Many more will be affected by the 30^th percentile rule and the overall benefits cap of £26,000

– The ‘vast majority’ of private tenants will be affected, as the government’s own figures now show.

As an aside, Ed Davey’s rage about the use of hyperbole about cleansing looked synthetic at the time – after all, Lord Turnbull said Gordon Brown was Stalinist – but it looks even odder now that Vince Cable has called the government ‘Maoist’. It seems that comparisons to genocidal maniacs are more common that we think.

We’ve observed before that the more the government accuse the opposition of scaremongering, the more likely it is to be true. Below the breadline…… kicking people when they’re down. Mr Davey’s real views deserve to be heard, and should be acted upon.

Even Ebenezer Scrooge finally repents. If the LibDems stand up for their principles, they might just get to play the part of the ghost of Christmas yet to come.

Tags Housing Benefit, Liberal Democrat