Red tape Archives - Red Brick

You have to watch the Tories like a hawk. Their latest gimmick is a review of a series of housing regulations under the guise of their ‘Red Tape Challenge’. As if it were all a little joke, Baroness Hanham (the Lords’ CLG Minister) ‘is asking people to vote out policies they think are the weakest links’ in the country’s housing laws. Everyone is invited to look through a long list of regulations and make suggestions as to what should go.
The danger in this exercise is illustrated by the Government’s examples of the ‘unnecessary red tape’ that they have already removed, which includes for example regulations on houses in multiple occupation and the supposedly liberating sections of the Localism Act.
Over 200 housing and construction regulations are covered by this latest red tape challenge – see the list here – covering the private rented sector, social housing, construction and building regulations. You are asked to comment on whether they should be scrapped altogether, changed from a regulation to a voluntary code, reformed or left as they are.
The problem with this kind of jumbo exercise is that the Government will get out of it what it wants. In the long list are important provisions protecting private or social tenants or building stndards that they will no doubt want to remove under the cover of having consulted in this meaningless way. We complained once before that the Government had included the whole of Equalities legislation in a single red tape challenge exercise – showing precisely how important they think equalities is.
Glancing down the housing list, most of the regulations mean little to me and they will sound technical and even trivial to most people. For example, I have no idea why there are so many Assured Tenancies (Approved Bodies) Orders, but some of our readers may be able to say why they matter. It would be surprising if there was nothing in the list that could and should be scrapped, but it is worth remembering that most will have been introduced to further a specific objective or to solve a particular problem.
Regulations included in the list cover issues such as:

the procedure covering demoted tenancies
protection for social tenants when a registered provider becomes insolvent
the forms of notice to be served on secure tenants when the landlord seeks possession
the suitability of accommodation offered to homeless households
the procedure governing registration as Commonhold land
the use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders, and
the management of houses in multiple occupation.

All of these are important issues in housing and most of the ones I have cited will be important to retain. But the device of reviewing all of them at once as part of a Cabinet Office exercise means that the eyes of the housing world are unlikely to be focused on any of them until, Bingo!, the Government concludes that a particular one should be removed or amended, which will probably be bad news for tenants somewhere.
So – a task for a night when sleep is avoiding you – have a look at the lists and see which of these regulations, if removed, would have a serious adverse effect. Then bung in a response to [email protected] saying briefly why it matters and why it should be retained (or strengthened). Then at least the website won’t be dominated by Tories and the Government won’t be able to say that there is no opposition to their conclusions.

One of the more offensive acts of this government has been to put the Equalities Act 2010 up as a topic for debate on its ‘Red Tape Challenge’ website.
Housing organisations have been at the forefront of promoting good policy in equalities and diversity for many years – the latest evidence being CIH’s publication this month of its guide to delivering housing services to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers – and should be ready to make the case for the retention of the Act in its entirety, together with its supporting regulations.
The 2010 Equalities Act – summarised here – pulled together the previous diverse strands of discrimination and equalities law into a coherent whole and added new duties and responsibilities. It harmonised the legislation to provide a single approach wherever possible.
Extensions included the new duty on public bodies to consider socio-economic disadvantage when making strategic decisions, wider definitions of discrimination, harassment and victimisation, stronger duties to help eliminate conduct which the Act prohibits, to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not, the use of positive action, amendments to family property law to remove discriminatory provisions and additional statutory property rights for civil partners.
What has caused so much offence is that all the other topics posted on the Red Tape Challenge website seem to involve changes to regulations whereas the equalities topic invites comment on the entire Act, which is of course primary legislation only recently passed by Parliament.
That is not to say that the other topics are unimportant – the website reads like a list of all the things where more not less regulation is probably needed (eg Major Hazard Industries, Biodiversity, Pensions).
It is worth a look at the comments contributed to the Red Tape website on equalities. It is pleasing to note the relative lack of hateful comments (compared to many website discussions on this topic) and the many positive and supportive comments.
So what is the government up to? The equalities website says that the government’s approach is as follows: “We do not want public bodies to have to show people these things: how they worked out whether their rules and services were fair; what they looked at when they checked that their rules and services were fair; who they involved when they were working out their equality goals; how they were going to check whether they had met their goals. We will not make public bodies tell us how they will work out how they are going to check that they are meeting their goals. This is because it will not help public bodies make equality better.”
Accusations of ‘red tape’ and ‘box ticking’ are often little more than a back door attack on the purpose of the regulations themselves. I suspect this is exactly what is happening on equalities. The whole housing sector should be watchful.