Tag: Decent Homes Standard

The tragedy of the death of Awaab Ishak as a direct result of the poor conditions in his social rented home has rightly awakened a storm of protest about the state of rented housing in this country. It is shaming to have to admit that our rented housing is failing so many people, but particularly the public sector stock that many of us are so proud of. 

Michael Gove’s attempt on the Today programme on 24^th November to lay the blame for mouldy walls and damp conditions entirely on social housing providers is unfair and just does not hold water. The Tory Government should take some responsibility for where we are now – but it won’t, of course. 

Firstly, the point should be made that the housing sector has had to deal with massive funding pressures since the Tories came into power in 2010. This started with the Spending Review of 2010 which saw investment in building new housing association homes cut by two thirds. Caps on subsidy, followed by rent caps (to save on Housing Benefit expenditure), and the end of funding for Decent Homes improvements meant that the sector stopped putting enough cash into maintenance. We also saw continual extensions of the Right To Buy reducing incomes from rents, and housing providers diverting funds into work to support tenants to cope with shrinking incomes through welfare “reforms”. The plain truth is that the failures in the stock are systemic and were predictable, and Gove’s attack on the sector is totally opportunistic and hypocritical. 

It is really shattering to hear so many tenants still saying that their landlords are not listening to them, but Gove’s claim that the current government is on the side of the tenant does not compute. He said they are bringing forward legislation “to allow us to hear the voice of tenants more clearly”, but he clearly does not remember that it was the Tory-led Coalition Government which, in short order after their election in 2010, as well as abolishing the Tenant Services Authority and the Audit Commission, thereby reducing the regulation of social landlords, also abandoned both National Tenant Voice (NTV) and the National Tenant Council, leaving tenants with no national representation at all. NTV would have had 4 distinct roles: 

• advocacy
• research 
• communication
• support

By contrast, as Marianne Hood pointed out in LHG’s recent In Conversation session, Robert Jenrick (former Secretary of State) saying he wanted tenants to feel more empowered did not mean, as Marianne comments, that tenants will be more empowered under the Tories’ plans. Indeed, the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill currently going through Parliament contains no mechanism to hear the collective voice of tenants, gives powers to the regulator but none to tenants, and provides tenants with little by way of accountability or redress, despite claims made by the Tories. Tenants – seen as consumers with a range of choices – will have no additional sanctions; only the Social Housing Regulator has these powers.  

Marianne also pointed out that genuine effective participation can lead to better design, better policies, and better use of scarce resources, and indeed to the avoidance of costly mistakes. The diminution of the tenant participation movement by the Tories from 2010 onwards – along with the end of tenants being required to be on Housing Association Boards – is part of the story of the tragic waste of life at Grenfell and elsewhere, as shown in Rochdale and sadly, likely in other places too. 

As I show below, some responsibility has to be taken by architects keen to use the latest but untested ideas of new design and new materials. We can also guess that structural problems, becoming rife in the private house-building in recent years, are likely to affect social housing too, since the problems are largely due to cost-cutting, under-supply of building inspectors, and poor regulation of the construction industry.

It is also shattering to hear that landlords are still alleging that their “lifestyle” is to blame for the damp and mould. 46 years ago, one of my first tasks as a new housing aid worker covering the North East of England was to help families living in a fairly new council estate who were lumbered with electricity bills of £200-300 a quarter, an unthinkable amount in the mid-1970s. The ceiling heating installed there was simply not suitable for the concrete “scissor” blocks, and many of the maisonettes were not only cold but had green and black walls, furniture rotting from the mould, and soaking wet carpets. As happens today, tenants were told they were not managing the heating properly, should stop drying clothes inside the rooms, and to turn up the heating and open the windows. The estate was demolished in the 1990s, with no-one in any doubt that the cheaply-built mass-produced concrete homes, and the ceiling heating, had not met the council’s original vision of the estate as a “bold pioneering showpiece development”. 

Of course the many stories about damp and mouldy homes heard since the inquest have been these problems in the private rented sector too. Michael Gove tries hard to persuade us that they are taking action to make life safer and more secure for private tenants. The abolition of S.21 no-fault evictions, first promised by the Tory Government in April 2019 is still awaited: the Renters’ Reform Bill will not go before the House of Commons until well into 2023, if we are lucky. Legislation to prevent retaliatory evictions will be included: surveys done by Shelter in 2014 led to the conclusion that around 200,000 private tenants had been evicted after asking for repairs to be carried out.

The cut in the numbers of Environmental Health Officers employed by local councils is also a huge contributor to the lack of enforcement on poor housing conditions. In 2019, Unison found that EHO budgets per head of population had more than halved – falling by 52.92% between 2009 and 2018 – and enforcement visits by EHOs had dropped by nearly a half. CIEH (the environmental health professional body) reported in 2021 that 9 out of 10 EH teams had used agency staff in 2020 because of lack of resources or recruitment problems, and 56% of councils had vacancies left empty for 6 months or more. Teams which now cover Covid-19 planning and contact tracing, food hygiene, emergency planning, trading standards, and business advice, in addition to their housing work, are widely said to be struggling to deliver some of their statutory environmental health duties. 

Finally, Gove’s statement on the radio that everyone has the right to a home fit for habitation would be great if it were true. Whilst the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2019 introduced by Karen Buck MP gives landlords a duty to make sure that homes are safe, healthy and free from hazards that could cause the tenant and their household serious harm, there is as yet no right to a home enshrined in UK law. LHG and the Labour Campaign for Human Rights are together doing our level best to ensure that this right is built into English law when we have a Labour Government in place. This would indeed ensure there is effective enforcement, redress for tenants, accountability of all landlords, and a voice for tenants, both individually and collectively. 

As Karen Buck herself points out, “with the Human Rights Act itself once again under attack by this Government, we must remain focused on what can be achieved and must be demanded right now, to end the misery endured by so many people trapped in unfit homes.” 

Sheila Spencer is the Secretary of the Labour Housing Group.

Image: Family handout

The damning verdict of the Awaab Ishak inquest has thrown a spotlight on the poor housing standards faced by many tenants across Britain. In Rochdale, where I am a Councillor, this tragedy has obviously hit home.  

Widespread media coverage means that most people have read about this awful case and seen the photos of the house where two-year old Awaab died, as a result of mould which the landlord – social housing provider Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) – failed to deal with. I can’t stop thinking of Awaab and his family.

National and local news outlets have rightly, in my opinion, reflected public sentiment: the buck for RBH’s failures stops with the housing association’s senior bosses including Chief Executive, Gareth Swarbrick. Michael Gove demanded a meeting with him earlier this week, but so far, no one from RBH has stepped down. 

Arguably, this is an exercise in blame avoidance – the Housing Secretary is keen to ensure the Government doesn’t take the rap for this, despite the fact that it’s part of a national problem. Many people living in social housing across the UK are suffering due to inadequate maintenance after over a decade of Tory cuts in the sector. The new cap on social housing rent increases, announced by the Chancellor the Autumn Statement, will make things even worse.  

Mr Gove stepping in ‘from the top down’ is also at odds with what would be happening here, if the social housing provider was adhering to its own mission statement.  

RBH is an independent, separate entity to Rochdale Council. It was previously an arm’s-length management organisation (ALMO) but became fully responsible for the borough’s council housing stock – over 12,000 homes – a decade ago, in 2012. RBH chose to call itself a ‘mutual’ rather than a housing association, and frequently emphasises its claim to be ‘the UK’s first tenant and employee co-owned mutual housing society’ with organisational values such as ‘responsibility’, ‘equity’ and ‘democracy’.

In relation to ‘democracy’ RBH says, on its website: ‘We are democratic. Our democracy is rooted in our mutual status and evidenced in our governance through our Representative Body and Board. Our tenants, employees and communities have a voice and power over what we do, and how we operate.’

This is simply not the case.

RBH does have a ‘Representative Body’ from which the only elected representatives of the community  – two Labour councillors, one of whom is the Council’s portfolio holder for housing – were removed by RBH officials at the start of this year. They publicly disagreed with the housing association’s plan to demolish council flats in Rochdale town centre. RBH is not allowing the Council to put the representatives it has nominated on this panel.    

Labour councillors have also questioned RBH’s credentials as a ‘mutual’. Under a proper mutual system, the tenants and communities RBH purports to empower would have democratic control, and surplus would be re-invested in the housing stock. In Rochdale, RBH executives have been enjoying repeated, substantial pay rises.

Following the coroner’s verdict on RBH this week, Rochdale Council’s housing portfolio holder has intervened by writing to them. It is a strongly worded letter and I agree with its content, but I’m sorry to say: it’s only a letter. This is the opposite of ‘communities having a voice and power’.

One reason this sad case stands out is that a mouldy home making people ill is something one might expect to see from an irresponsible landlord, hellbent on making a profit at any human cost, in the private rented sector. Awaab Ishak didn’t die in private rented housing, though.

Social housing providers need to make a surplus: enough money to invest in, and improve, their stock. Unlike in the private sector, social landlords’ main concern is not profit making – arguably they should not be doling out continued, significant pay rises and quashing scrutiny from elected representatives.

All bodies whose work significantly impacts the community, like RBH does, should have some form of democratic representation on their boards from a local authority. Social housing providers should also refrain from placing directors of other housing associations on their boards as this does not result in adequate scrutiny when it comes to decisions about executives’ pay. 

Political oversight (or at least involvement) should come from the most local level possible. This is a vital element of ensuring that social housing providers listen and respond to people’s needs, at a time when – as this case tragically illustrates – standards appear to be declining. 

Without input from community representatives with confidence and ‘know how’ about how boards and local democracy work, social housing providers like RBH will continue to fail to acknowledge and understand public opinion. Most importantly executive directors should feel that, when they are making decisions about the lives of so many people, ‘the public’ are sitting in the room.

We are in the middle of interrelated cost of living and housing crises. There is much more we need to find out about the state of the social housing stock across the country and questions about standards do need to be asked, because many of the people this affects are the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. 

Councillors across the country have important skills to contribute in these areas. 

Perhaps a future Labour Government could pass legislation to ensure that social housing providers have local authority representation on their boards. This would help to ensure that ordinary, local people have a stronger voice on these critically important issue.  

Elsie Blundell is a councillor, the Chair of Labour Housing Group North West branch and sits on Labour’s National Policy Forum.