Tag: Social housing

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We need to talk about Section 106… again

Following the Spending Review earlier this summer, the affordable housing sector has been invigorated by a sense of security, which has allowed us to look more confidently towards future investments and our commitment to tackling the housing crisis. This, in turn, has reopened discussions around Section 106 agreements (S106) and their key role in ensuring that the Government meets its ambitious target of delivering 1.5m new homes this Parliament.

However, the question we should be asking is not ‘when will housing associations (HAs) start bidding for S106 again?’ but rather ‘are the S106 currently on the market suitable for the communities we want to help build?’

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S106 has, indeed, historically been one of the main ways of delivering affordable housing across the UK, while also securing significant investment from developers for infrastructure funding, environmental protection, local jobs and training opportunities. HAs have been called upon to support housing delivery targets through S106 and we have effectively answered the call for a long time now, even when conditions weren’t great.    

However, as our sector’s finances have been taking repeated hits in the last few years, we have become much more selective in the contracts we are taking on, this resulting in a notable decrease in S106. The Housebuilders Federation (HBF) has reported record figures of 17,400 affordable homes not being under contract at the end of 2024. And more recently flagged that 8,500 homes due in the next 12 months are at risk of not being built or being kept empty because of lack of interest from HAs.

While these figures are alarming, the onus shouldn’t be placed solely on housing associations to get us out of this mess.

Rethinking S106 contracts

I was personally encouraged by the Government’s commitment to tackling the S106 problem and setting up the Clearing Service under Homes England. Despite its low initial take-up (reportedly only 10% of contracts were registered six months after it was launched) this is an essential tool for exploring why S106 contracts are being declined. And while it’s easy to point at HA finances as sole culprit, results so far are pointing towards tenure mix, location, as well as issues with management agreements.

This is something we’ve explored earlier this year, when the G15 launched a guidance document, supported by HAs, local authorities and developers alike. Building Together, Building Better: Rethinking S106 for Affordable Housing Delivery has voiced our concerns over the quality and design of some of the homes acquired through these agreements, as well as the timing in which these are currently being built.

The fact is that, when bidding for these homes, we are often faced with a ‘take it or leave it’ deal, rather than being brought in early on, when we can influence the planning process. Critical factors like the design and quality of properties, the way that places are managed, and the terms of the deals themselves. Building new homes isn’t enough. They must genuinely meet the needs of the people who live in them and be sustainably manageable by housing associations for decades to come.

This means that service charges, which are a major issue residents raise with us, should be affordable, transparent and offer value for money. The development conditions and management arrangements should reflect that commitment, especially considering many HA residents are low-income families, or marginal buyers through shared ownership.

Complex management structures also make for difficult arrangements, with additional costs, and often conflicting standards and priorities amongst the partners. Where possible, HAs prefer to be able to control the whole block of flats, particularly in urban areas, including the homes, communal areas and structure, as a Freeholder or Head Lessee. On larger developments, where that isn’t possible, simple and clear management arrangements must be agreed, with HAs being able to influence control over cost and quality of the service provision.

The G15 report, led by L&Q, talks about early engagement and collaboration as leading principles for any viable S106 agreement. It provides a practical framework for developers going forward to unlock the large volume of affordable housing and details principles around affordability, planning, design and management structures. These need to be seriously considered to make S106 contracts attractive and viable for the sector again.

In the meantime, housing associations are doing it for themselves. We are playing our part in tackling the housing crisis. Together, the G15’s members own or manage more than 770,000 homes across the country and they house around one in ten Londoners. We also build around 15% of all affordable homes across England and, in the last financial year, L&Q was solely responsible for 10% of all affordable housing handovers in London.

Given HAs’ social mission, we respond to residents’ and communities’ genuine needs, which is why we want to build the right type of homes in the right areas. And that is why it is essential that both HAs and local authorities are involved in the planning process early on and transparency is maintained throughout delivery.

Collectively housing associations are the largest providers of affordable housing in the country. However, if we are to reach the ambitious targets the Government has set out, we need partnership structures where we are considered equal, involved early-on and maintain transparency throughout the project.

With over a million people on housing waiting lists, and local authorities spending over £5m every day on temporary accommodation, we urgently need to build together – and build better.

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Social and Affordable Housing: An Engine for Economic Growth, Resilience and Social Value

The UK housing crisis has often been framed as a problem of supply, with the conversation frequently reduced to a question of how many homes can we build and how quickly. I would argue, that when we talk about social and affordable housing, the discussion should go far deeper. 

Building homes is not just about the physical building; it’s also about economic growth, healthier communities, reduced strain on public services and creating long-term value that benefits society. 

Recent Government announcements, from expanding the Affordable Housing Programme to the inclusion of housing in the National Infrastructure Pipeline offer real glimmers of hope. The commitment to New Towns, alongside a renewed focus on social and affordable housing quotas in planning, signals a recognition that housing is both critical infrastructure and a driver for prosperity and growth. 

However, in the face of economic uncertainty, the temptation for local and central government to scale back their ambition will weigh heavy. And in my view that would be a profound mistake. 

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The economic case for social and affordable Housing

Investment in social and affordable housing is set to generate a ripple effect across the economy. Research led by Shelter and the Centre for Economic and Business Research found that building 90,000 social homes a year could add £51.2bn to the economy over 30 years. This includes delivering a £12bn net profit to the taxpayer. 

This is not just an abstract theory, nor is it rocket science. When we build, we create jobs across the construction sector, manufacturing, logistics and professional services with money flowing into local supply chains. 

Affordable housing also has an impact on disposable incomes. Households paying genuinely affordable rents have more money to spend in their local economy, which supports local businesses and strengthens community resilience. When coupled with infrastructure such as new transport links and digital connectivity, the economic impact is amplified, enabling both residents and businesses to flourish. 

Reducing long-term public cost

The social case is also very compelling and the cost of not doing enough is already evident. According to Shelter more than 131,000 households were in temporary accommodation during March 2025, including 169,050 children. Local authorities spent £2.29 billion on temporary accommodation in 2023/24 an increase of 29% on the previous year. Without intervention, the numbers will continue to rise with millions being spent on B&Bs and private rentals at inflated prices. 

Social and affordable housing directly reduces this burden. By moving households into stable, permanent homes, local authorities can redirect resources towards prevention, support services and regeneration. 

The benefits extend into healthcare and education. Stable housing is linked to mental and physical health outcomes, reduced hospital admissions and better school attendance. These outcomes reduce the demand on what are already overstretched services. To put it bluntly, every social and truly affordable home built is an investment into lowering pressure on tomorrow’s public expenditure while improving the local economy. 

Social value as a metric 

Too often housing policy and investment decisions are judged solely by their immediate financial returns. However, the concept of social value, enshrined in the Public Services Act, offers a more inclusive and equitable framework. By adopting social value as a core metric, decision-makers can better identify those benefits that go beyond profit. These include meaningful outcomes for individuals and communities, such as the creation of local jobs, apprenticeships, and community facilities delivered through development projects. 

I believe that embedding social value should be a strategic priority.  That’s why we back our words with action, ensuring that every social and affordable home we deliver is designed to generate lasting economic and social benefits for the community.  From generating local employment and apprenticeships to incorporating sustainable design that helps to reduce household bills, our developments are designed to have a meaningful impact for communities and the environment.

Partnership between the public and private sector 

To achieve its ambition of delivering 370,000 homes annually, the Government must fully leverage collaboration between the public and private sector. While the public sector plays a critical role in strategic planning and ensuring development aligns with social and environmental standards, the private sector can contribute essential capital, innovation and deliver capacity. 

In addition, SMEs and new entrants will be vital in expanding the housing sectors capacity. Their agility, local knowledge, and willingness to innovate will help to unlock underutilised sites, diversify the housing market and accelerate the delivery of new homes. 

By embedding fresh perspectives into the broader partnership approach, Government can foster a more resilient housing market. Supporting SMEs through targeted procurement, access to finance, and streamlined planning processes will be vital to realising their full potential. 

Facing economic headwinds

Rising interest rates, construction inflation, and a shortage of skilled labour are genuine challenges. Yet scaling back housing delivery in response to these pressures would be a false economy. The skills gap, in particular can be addressed through housing-led investment that includes commitments to apprenticeships and training in modern methods of construction (MMC), helping to modernise the sector while expanding. 

With strong partnerships, innovative delivery models and unwavering political will, we can build the homes that pay back their cost many times over in economic growth, reduced public spending, and stronger, healthier communities. Abandoning or watering down this commitment would not only leave tens of thousands of people without the homes they need, but it will also weaken the economy, widen inequality and miss the chance to deliver one of the most effective long-term investments available to any government. 

The message from academic research, housing leaders and developers on the front line of delivering social and affordable housing is clear. Social housing is social value, and social value has capital value. Officially reclassifying it as critical infrastructure can unlock billions in stable investment, backed by a clear policy direction and planning alignment. If Government can stay the course and long-term funding is maintained, the UK can do more than just house its citizens. It can anchor its economy in stable inclusive growth. 

For households and communities still feeling the impact of the increase in the cost-of-living crisis, new social housing represents not just a shelter, but real hope. It is a visible commitment to rebuilding the social contract, a recognition that everyone deserves a safe, affordable home as a basic human right and foundation for prosperity and opportunity. 

You can hear more from Mark Powell at Labour Housing Group’s fringe at Labour Party Conference in partnership with EDAROTH: How can Labour reach 1.5 million homes through harnessing SMEs and innovative approaches? (Monday 29th: 15:30 – 16:30)

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Blog Post Class of 2024

Labour’s first year in Government has kickstarted a generational uplift in social housebuilding

Like many in the Labour movement, fixing the housing crisis has been a key priority for me before and throughout my journey into politics.

Throughout my early career working on planning reform in the Treasury, to co-ordinating between boroughs at regional and sub-regional levels, to directly programming and delivering social homes in local government, the challenge and potential of social housing has been ever-present to me.

Every social home we build represents a household with a stable roof over their head, shielded from the increasingly unaffordable private rental sector. It is a child who is protected from moving miles to a new school after being rehoused into temporary accommodation; it is a pensioner freed from the worry of their rent increasing beyond their fixed income; it is a carer whose Local Housing Allowance is being reinvested into the state rather than funnelled into a landlord’s bank account. Most importantly, every social home we deliver puts the sector as a whole on a firmer footing, guarantees stable income to run a sustainable service, and provides a tangible asset for registered providers to lend against in building even more social homes.

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It is easy to pin the blame for the state of social housing on the first introduction of the Right to Buy, which led to the mass sell-off of council homes, but we cannot let the past 15 years of neglectful Tory Governments of the hook either. From cutting the Affordable Homes Programme by 40% upon entering office, to supercharging the Right to Buy, as well as suppressing rents for years, the Conservatives enabled the sell-off of social homes while stripping away the ability to build more. From 2012 to 2024, 124,000 homes were sold on the Right to Buy, at the same time as the number of households in temporary accommodation increased to 127,890.

This alone is challenging enough, but the Conservatives’ decisions on housing delivery were also deeply harmful by letting developers off the hook with a range of intermediate tenures. The introduction of affordable rent in 2011, and the inclusion of student accommodation and build-to-rent housing within planning guidance from 2019, have all funnelled crucial developer contributions towards other tenures and further weakened social rent.

The fact that this has come at the same time as a historically difficult environment for delivery has resulted in a perfect storm preventing new social homes. Supply chain inflation and skills shortages have all increased the cost of building, at the same time as social housing providers have faced financial squeeze from introduction of important regulation in building safety, social housing regulation, as well as the pressing need to decarbonise our housing stock.

The result has been profound for the sector, as the delivery of new social homes slumped from 60,000 in 2010/11 to under 10,000 in 2023/4.

We need safer, warmer, and better-managed social homes, and we cannot expect social providers to deliver this alongside more homes without substantial support.

And this is exactly what the new Government has provided. Within a single year of power, Labour has introduced a number of reforms which will not only prevent the sell-off of social homes and laying the groundwork for a generational boost to this most important tenure which was laid out in our manifesto.

The Government has curtailed the Right to Buy, reducing the available discounts and setting forward a number of new reforms including ensuring that council tenants are truly long-term residents by ensuring that they have lived there for ten years, removing newbuild council homes from the Right to Buy, and preventing homes sold through the Right to Buy from being let out in the private rental sector.

Importantly, the Government also made it easier to build new social homes, through reforms to planning and focus increasingly on social rent. Three particular changes here have been particularly exciting to me: the decision to instruct England to focus Affordable Homes Programme spending on social rent; the new Compulsory Purchase powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill which will allow local authorities to purchase land for social homes at use value, rather than inflated ‘hope value’; and the ‘golden rules’ allocated to ‘grey belt’ sites of low-quality land on the edge of cities, which will prioritise the development of affordable homes.

Finally, the Government has provided a stable financial footing at the most recent Spending Review for registered providers to increase supply at pace. Alongside the much-discussed £39 billion Affordable Homes Programme, other grant funding for decarbonisation and building safety will reduce the pressures faced by the sector to bring existing stock up to date, and a ten-year rent settlement will bring their revenue in real terms back up to 2015 levels and enable for longer term business planning.

The significant investment in social housing by this Government shows a key recognition of the value of a social tenancy.  But we cannot rest on the laurels of this progress and we need to continue to find and address faults preventing the development of new social homes.

One of these has to be around developer contributions, the Section 106 process and viability assessments. Local authorities and housing campaigners rightly complain that developers too often sidestep contributions, make the most of loopholes, or renegotiate affordable housing requirements after Section 106 agreements are made, and discerning what is a reasoned response to a fast-changing delivery environment is challenging. This is particularly the case as we look more and more on land value uplift to deliver what the state has failed to do for the past 15 years, whether that is building roads, GP surgeries or schools, or building social homes. We need streamlining of this process to ensure that agreements are conducted transparently and enforced effectively. Prioritising social rent and empowering local authorities to scrutinise developer claims, would all help in this area.

The Government also needs to press forward in its work to reform the Building Safety Regulator. Social housebuilders are those with the least resources and are more likely to be looking into building high rises than homes for market sale, and so ensuring that mandatory guidance is given beforehand and that feedback from failed applications is readily available is crucial as the new regime embeds itself.

Finally, social homes need to be at the heart of the Government’s New Towns vision. If these are to live up to their promise and deliver genuinely new communities in new settlements or urban extensions, then affordable and secure options need to be present for those priced out of home ownership.

Labour’s record of delivery on housing policy in its first year of government has been impressive, and I am proud of the work already done to lay the groundwork for the generational boost in social housing as promised in our manifesto. Undoing decades of decline under the previous Government’s tenure will have a meaningful impact on living standards and make meaningful progress on the human consequences endured by the hundreds of thousands of people in temporary accommodation.  We must continue to act quickly and decisively and to prioritise any measures which will create more social homes, and to deliver the change which millions of people voted for a year ago.

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Reforming Section 106 is crucial for a generational boost in social housing

Blochairn Road Social Housing, Glasgow by TECU Consulting is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Blochairn Road Social Housing, Glasgow by TECU Consulting is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The Section 106 (S106) planning obligation system has long been the backbone of affordable housing delivery across England. Yet, far from being the robust solution we need, it has morphed into an inadequate sticking plaster, barely concealing a profound crisis in genuinely affordable, social rented housing. The more reliant we have become on S106 agreements, the fewer homes we’ve actually delivered. It’s high time we confronted the reality: our dependence on developer-led contributions is fundamentally failing to deliver the homes communities desperately need.

First conceived in the 1990 Town and Country Planning Act, S106 was originally intended to mitigate the localised impacts of new developments—addressing pressures on local infrastructure like schools, healthcare, and transport. Generally, there are two ways to fund social and affordable housebuilding: through government spending via grants or loans, or through developers’ contributions. However, over time, as state-backed social housing provision shrank dramatically, S106 evolved far beyond its initial scope, becoming a primary vehicle for affordable housing supply. Today, it accounts for a staggering 38% of social homes and half of all affordable homes delivered annually. But instead of a sign of success, this reliance reveals a deeply flawed approach.

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The current mechanism incentivises developers to prioritise ambiguous and often less suitable housing tenures such as shared ownership or ‘affordable rent’—both considerably less beneficial than genuinely affordable social rented homes. Worse yet, developers frequently opt out of construction obligations altogether, preferring financial payments to already overburdened local authorities with little capacity to use this funding to build. Indeed, while the government’s recent pledge to recruit an extra 300 local planning officers is a positive step, it falls significantly short, replacing fewer than one in ten of the planning positions cut throughout the 2010s. This leaves local authorities severely under-resourced to effectively manage and enforce S106 obligations.The result is clear: fewer actual homes and a deepening crisis.

The viability assessment process, designed to test whether developers can meet planning obligations without compromising profits, has further exacerbated the problem. Despite high-profile cases—like the infamous Battersea Power Station development—raising awareness of exploitation, the truth is that these viability assessments routinely undermine local authorities. Too often, developers reduce or even eliminate their affordable housing commitments entirely by claiming financial unfeasibility. This opaque and subjective process means fewer social homes are built, and crucial opportunities for alleviating housing pressures are lost, often permanently.

Ironically, the reliance on S106 has only deepened since government funding for social housebuilding was drastically cut post-2010. With austerity measures stripping away substantial grant-funding streams, we increasingly looked to developers’ contributions as a makeshift replacement. But the numbers don’t lie. While government targets aim for 300,000 new homes annually, just 7,500 social homes were built in England in 2022/23, down alarmingly from nearly 40,000 a decade ago. Even more starkly, Right to Buy alone axed more than 14,000 social homes out of circulation in the same period, meaning we have had a net loss in social housing stock. Clearly, our existing approach is broken, underlined by the fact that the more we’ve depended on developer contributions, the fewer genuinely affordable homes we’ve managed to produce.

But diagnosing the problem is just the first step. We must urgently pursue substantial reforms to the S106 framework, starting by prioritising the construction of genuinely affordable social rented homes within all agreements. Introducing a mandatory minimum percentage of 15% for social rent tenures within S106 obligations would directly counter developers’ preference for less socially beneficial tenures or financial opt-outs. This simple measure would clarify obligations, remove ambiguity, and most importantly, deliver the genuinely affordable homes that communities across the country desperately need.

Additionally, we must reform the viability assessment process fundamentally. Transparency must become mandatory, and local authorities need enhanced powers and resources to scrutinise developers’ claims effectively. A revised, robust viability framework would prevent abuse, accelerate negotiations, and ensure that developments truly contribute to local housing needs rather than merely inflating developers’ bottom lines.

These immediate reforms are essential but insufficient on their own. Ultimately, the underlying crisis in social housing demands a significant increase in direct government investment. We must look to the next phase of the Affordable Homes Programme, as well as the new £2bn boost, as an opportunity to refocus explicitly on social rented housing. A clear national target backed by meaningful public investment could not only reduce reliance on developers but would restore the stability and predictability required to deliver social housing at scale.

The stakes could hardly be higher. Without these reforms, the government’s ambitious housing targets will remain forever out of reach, and our housing crisis will only deepen. The reliance on a failing S106 system is simply unsustainable. It’s time we embraced a more ambitious, government-backed strategy for social housing delivery—a strategy that prioritises homes over profits, transparency over obfuscation, and genuine affordability over sticking plasters. Only then can we build the future our communities truly deserve.

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10-year plan for housing Blog Post

Adapting to the digital age in the Government’s 10-year plan for housing

Any ten year plan for housing has to at least try to grapple with some of the Rumsfeldian “known unknowns” – in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, the more we know the more we know we don’t know. 

Nowhere is this as prevalent as the impact that better and faster technologies continue to have on the transition from an analogue world, where knowledge is held in tangible form, to an increasingly digital one where knowledge is held in the form of “ones or zeros” in a server farm in the middle of nowhere.

This is hard stuff for humans, and the organisations they have created for the analogue world, to adapt to.  The rate of technological progress already far outstrips the rate of evolution of the human race – and that’s before quantum computing (QC) becomes widely available.  To give an idea of the power of quantum, Google reported in 2023 that their Sycamore quantum computer managed in seconds to crunch numbers that using the Frontier supercomputer (then the most powerful computer in the world) would take over 47 years – that’s roughly 10 million times quicker.   

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Is QC with all that potential to boost speeds and productivity going to develop to be in the mainstream in the next 10 years?  Nobody knows – it is for now firmly in VUCA territory.  But its not contentious to say that technologies are bringing advances at an exponential rate – as the surge in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in the last 3 years has shown.  The pace at which the potential of these technologies will grow seems unlikely to slow.

To suggest that the housing world has been slow to adopt and adapt to the increased pace of digitalization over the last decade is also not contentious.   Customers judge their landlord not against its performance with some other landlord, but against the speed, price and effectiveness of other organisations they deal with in their lives.  And relative to the very best out there, social landlords continue to fall behind.  As an example, car manufacturers will now call drivers to alert them to a drop in tyre pressure – but few landlords have any equivalent way of knowing that pressure in a boiler has dropped and the heating has stopped working, let alone devised ways of working to take advantage of this insight.

Put simply, technology and digitalization has the potential to change the game for the biggest gripe there is between landlords and residents: moving the mindset for repairing homes from one based around “you tell us its broken, we will fix it” to “we can predict this will break, so we are coming to fix it before it does”. 

Of course, in the general economy, the invisible hand of the market assures that there are rewards for those who “move with the times” and penalties for those who do not.  In fields such as social housing, that hand has to be driven through regulation.  And for the next 10 years, Government and its associated Regulator, has to up its game in relation to technology and data expectations.  Perhaps there are four areas to prioritise:

  1. Getting the basics right.  For three consecutive years, the Regulator for Social Housing (RSH) has been warning that social landlords’ data and digital practices are not up to scratch.  Residents, the Housing Ombudsman Service, MPs and local councillors all know it from the range of complaints they make or have to deal with; and the Information Commissioners Office knows it from the reported data breaches.   But regulatory action has not followed; Government should ensure that on such an important aspect of modern service delivery, the Regulator can no longer be ignored with impunity.
  2. Moving to real-time. Once data is comprehensive and accurate a transition to real-time becomes possible.  Many possible improvements flow from this such as: evidencing compliance can become continuous, rather than episodic; service charges can be calculated precisely for the services provided for the extract duration of the tenancy; and real time data sits at the heart of the automation (and enhanced efficiency) of service delivery.
  3. Transparency. When data was kept on paper, inside files, and office floors groaned with the weight of many filing cabinets, making information visible to others was hard.  Digital data faces no such barriers.  The time has come for Government to mandate that all data about a resident’s tenancy, their home and the services they receive is available without asking, so the “I know what they know” test is passed
  4. Professionalism and skills. With a pause in the launch of the Competence and Conduct standard, the Government has a chance to rectify the glaring omission from the consultation document – in which neither the word “data”, “digital”, nor “technology” appear.  You cannot be a professional today without this skill set, let alone in 10 years’ time.   

In short, the government should set a direction and regulatory expectations for housing organisations to have “Digital in their DNA” – where technological and digital competence is so deeply embedded in the landlords’ culture and capabilities, its leadership style, and its associated systems and processes that it has stopped even being a thing organisations have to think about.  And to do that, first, the digital competence of the RSH itself has to be prioritised and invested in so it no longer uses an old map to navigate a very different new world.

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How building Council housing can help Labour beat Reform UK

How to beat Reform UK? It’s the question many in the Labour Party are now asking, with increasing desperation.

Alienated from mainstream politics and politicians, Reform UK supporters see Labour as the ‘establishment’ with little concern or understanding for their lives or their problems. To reach Reform supporters, Labour needs to show in practical, concrete ways that it ‘gets’ Reform voters’ concerns. Labour needs to deliver practical and concrete improvements across the country.

The answer is straightforward. Labour needs to build more council homes and create more non-graduate jobs. And we can do both at the same time using the same money.

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Building more council homes in every part of the country will directly benefit those families who are currently in housing need. Those who are overcrowded or who need a smaller home. Those who are homeless and living in expensive and substandard private rented accommodation. Those whose children and grandchildren are paying through the roof to private landlords for very basic accommodation.

Many of these families have lost faith in mainstream politics after 14 years of failed Conservative governments when few new council homes were built and many continued to be sold off. We need to show, by our actions, that the needs of the non-graduates living in non-metropolitan parts of the country are just as much a priority for Labour as anywhere else.

The new council homes Labour builds should benefit the widest range of families. When new council homes are being built, existing residents should know that they will benefit, too. A central message should be that the new council homes are not just for ‘other people’ or ‘outsiders’, they are for people like YOU. Using local housing allocation policies in operation on many Labour councils already, half the new homes should go to those families who have been waiting patiently for a bigger or smaller home. The other half should go to those who are currently homeless or have been languishing on the housing waiting list.

Building new council homes needs a range of traditional non-graduate skills – bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, plasterers, scaffolders, painters, decorators, carpenters. Just watch an episode of Nick Knowles’ DIY SOS to see the wide range of non-graduate trades needed to build or renovate a house.

Using existing construction companies, local subcontractors and their employees will benefit, too. Many of these subcontractors will be small businesses and will get a real boost by Labour’s council house building programme. Local council house building programmes will give small construction companies the long-term commitment needed to plan their investment.

Working with local colleges, we need a massive construction skills training programme, equipping people of all ages with a skill that will form the basis of a lifetime working career. Construction skills give access to jobs in every part of the country and to any country in the world. You can work for a company or be your own boss, working hard to build a business that gives you and your family financial security and independence. The construction workers benefitting from Labour’s council house building programme will have a real and tangible stake in the economy and in society.

When the new residents move in, some will want new furniture, new carpets and new white goods. Buying these will help local shops and help grow the wider economy. Others will want to paint or paper the walls and add a few personal touches, benefitting local DIY shops.

And don’t forget that the new council tenants will be paying rent to the Council which will then be used to pay back the money it borrowed to build the new homes.

As John Harris wrote in a recent ‘Guardian article, the politics are very basic,

“Four decades ago, many of Reform UK’s older supporters had their lives transformed by Margaret Thatcher’s policy of encouraging people to buy their council houses at huge discounts; now, their daughters, sons and grandchildren live with the dire housing crisis that policy caused. If you understand at least some of the rising ire about immigration as fear of even more competition for scarce resources, housing is right at its heart: in my experience, no other issue comes near its impact on everyday life.”

We have it in our power to embark on the biggest council housing programme since 1945. If we don’t take this opportunity and then lose out to Reform UK in 2029, it will be our own fault. Let’s not make this mistake!

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Blog Post

Social housing needs the Streeting treatment

Prime Minister Keir Starmer NHS 10 Year Plan Consultation, image by No 10 licensed under CC BY 2.0

The health service is getting the Wes Streeting treatment of more finance and reform. The case for the same approach for social housing is compelling. Health and housing both determine our quality of lives. The two are interrelated, with homelessness and poor-quality housing costing the health service billions.

2024 saw the lowest Labour vote share among social renters since Ipsos began their election studies.

Also worryingly more social housing tenants said that they voted Reform than any other tenure.

Social renters were the tenure most likely to vote Reform UK

We need to convince tenants that we can make this tangible difference to their lives, by fundamentally changing the power relationship between social tenants and their landlords, drawing upon the insight that Tony Crosland offered about the inequality of decision-making power as far back as 1956 in his book The Future of Socialism.

There are two separate dialogues going on within social housing, one amongst those who manage social housing and another amongst those that live in it.

For councillors and housing professionals the issue is finance. There is simply not the money to make council housing safe and liveable, as highlighted in the Future of Council Housing Report by Toby Lloyd and Rose Grayston and the Labour Housing Group Briefing, Funding Social Housing. The issue for housing associations is that their only way to find the money for safety works is to slash their newbuild programmes, frustrating the Government’s ambition to accelerate the delivery of new affordable homes.

Conversely, at meetings of social tenants, the concern is about the culture of those managing their homes, with tenants feeling disrespected and stigmatised. Angela Rayner referenced this hurt in her 2024 Conference speech saying that she will not allow ‘people like me to be treated like this.’ Those of us responsible for decision-making in social housing think we are doing God’s work, but too often our tenants see us as the enemy.

This anger has intensified post-Grenfell. Pete Apps the author of Show Me the Bodies:How We Let Grenfell Happen has given me permission to share two photographs. The photographs contrast the residents of mixed ethnic origin who died, with the people who were questioned about their culpability who are overwhelmingly white.A representation of structural racism could not be starker.

Social housing is in the same place as the health service, most tenant satisfaction surveys report that the majority of users are satisfied, but a significant minority are not, which is not surprising given that both services are chronically underfunded. Very few people who use the health service and social housing question its existence, they just want the outcomes to be better.

What forces are feeding dissatisfaction?

The first is that housing workers are blamed for the chronic underfunding of the service we provide. We are the human face of a service that is not funded to meet the minimal expectation of tenants to live in a secure, safe and liveable home.

The second is stigmatisation. As the number of people living in council housing has reduced, an historic prejudice against council tenants has hardened into stigmatisation. Many people applying for and living in social housing have had substantial experience of disrespect, stigmatisation and racism. Those of us who work in housing need to be sensitive to these life experiences.

In his only reference to council housing Crosland wrote about how the improved standard of council housing that Labour had initiated in 1946 would reduce the prejudice against council housing. Unfortunately as the stock of council housing ages and the effects of chronic underfunding become more apparent the opposite is happening today.

Breaking down power inequality

As early as 1956 Tony Crosland worried about the power dynamic emerging in large public organisations, foreseeing the potential for those without a voice to resent those who make the decisions that impact on their lives. He described power as a “Stratifying Influence”.

Power is a status-confirming attribute, with a strong influence on collective feelings of superiority and inferiority.

Tony Crosland: The Future of Socialism page 128

He identified two forms of decision-making power, the first is the remote strategic power of those at the top of social housing organisations, who few tenants get to talk to:

Such power, being inevitably wielded to some extent in secret and without collecting the voices of those most affected, has a quality of remoteness and detachment which makes it a particularly fertile source of resentment, and hence, since the disparities between controllers and controlled are so wide of deep class consciousness.

Tony Crosland: The Future of Socialism page 129

The second is the face-to-face power of the person the tenant gets to meet who either makes or communicates important decisions. It might seem odd to the hard-pressed, underpaid worker in a homelessness unit or a call centre that they have power, but this is how it is experienced by the person who needs their help.

Another feature of large organisations is a diffusion of responsibility, which means that responsibility is usually shared, making it easier for those responsible to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. The Grenfell inquiry has highlighted the catastrophic consequences. Those on the ground argued that they were following procedures or instructions made by those higher up; conversely those at the top claimed not to know what was happening and criticised those on the ground for not exercising reasonable judgement.

Whilst Grenfell was a catastrophic event, it is common to hear from social housing tenants frustrated that no-one within the organisation is taking responsibility for sorting their problem out.

This reluctance to take responsibility was evident at the top in the previous Government, with Michael Gove criticising social housing providers, creating the Social Housing Regulator to scrutinise organisational performance, and promoting a more assertive role for the Housing Ombudsman with a focus on complaints resolution, but without providing the necessary resources to improve performance and resolve complaints.

How can transformative change be achieved?

The challenges facing Wes Streeting to transform the NHS are immense. While the NHS is hardly a simple structure, Angela Rayner’s job of persuading, incentivising and cajoling hundreds of different social housing providers to work in the national interest involves an even more complex ecosystem.

Secondly, money is tight. It is more electorally popular to fund the universal health service than needs-based social housing. However, without adequate funding it is impossible to say that the failures of Grenfell “will not happen again”, as Building Safety Minister Alex Norris promised.

There are compelling moral and political arguments for more money. The Blair and Brown Governments found £32bn over 10 years for a Decent Homes programme for council housing. The requirement is now far more pressing.

The power relationship needs to be changed. The majority of tenants are too over-committed to want to be involved in decision-making. However, they want to know that people like them have a voice and that they can go to them when they have a problem. Doing so will affect the way that organisations operate and how decisions are made.

A low-cost and quick win is to create a national body to represent social tenants’ interests, an idea suggested by Crosland to introduce a little democracy into public services. A more long-term task is to create representative bodies at local and regional levels.

A second quick win is to revolutionise the training of everyone who works in social housing, from those on the ground to top decision-makers, as mentioned by Angela Rayner in her conference speech. This must involve the discussion of the structural issues described.

A more controversial proposal is for different housing providers to come together in urban areas to form Neighbourhood Management Boards, with tenant representation. Good housing management is a placed-based neighbourhood activity. Residents are more likely to participate if they can see that they are making a tangible difference to their neighbourhood. The tenants and officers making decisions will be local and accessible. The Right to Manage for council tenants offers an example of how local management could become more formalised, with each local social housing organisation contributing a management and maintenance allowance to the Neighbourhood Management Board.

Crosland understood that cultural change cannot be dictated by national government. Tough decisions will still need to be made, some of them will not be liked by tenants at the sharp end. However, the creation of Neighbourhood Management Boards will create a structure which facilitates positive change.

When Wes Streeting was asked about his political heroes, he replied:

I guess I’m in the modernising tradition of the Labour Party, so I’ve got up on my shelf to remind myself about Crosland’s book on The Future of Socialism which I think is always worth going back to when your party’s in trouble.

Hopefully, we can apply Crosland’s insight before we find ourselves in trouble.

Andy Bates is a member of the National LHG Executive and secretary of the London Branch. He is the retired Executive Manager of a tenant managed organisation (TMO), Leathermarket JMB. He is currently a Board member of Wenlock Barn (TMO). He is a TPAS and Community Led Housing London Associate and a tutor for the Chartered Institute of Housing. 

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Funding the social housing revolution – what the sector needs

Today there are 4.2 million people in need of social housing in England including people living in overcrowded, unsuitable and unaffordable homes or homeless. We are in a housing emergency, caused by years of cuts and short term piecemeal policy decisions. What the social housing sector urgently needs to be able to tackle the housing crisis is long term certainty – both in policy and funding.

Only a few months into power, the new government has already been promisingly vocal on housing. Secretary of State, Angela Rayner, has announced an overhaul of the planning system, reintroduced more ambitious mandatory housing targets and recognised the role of social and affordable housing in achieving the government’s ambition of building 1.5m homes over this parliament.

Housing associations are ready to play their part in making this happen, but they’re starting from a fragile financial position. For starters, successive rent freezes and caps mean that rental income is 15% lower in real terms than it was in 2015; this equated to £3bn in lost rental income for housing associations last year. Alongside this, the sector is also facing significant financial pressure from building safety costs. Since social housing doesn’t have access to government building safety funding, housing associations estimate they’ll need to spend in excess of £6bn making all their buildings safe over the next decade. Last year, housing associations increased investment in their existing homes by nearly 20%, spending a record £7.7bn on repairs and maintenance.

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All of these competing pressures, on top of direct cuts to funding for new homes, has inevitably led to a reduction in plans for building new affordable and social housing at a time when they are needed more than ever.

Earlier this year, the Levelling Up, Housing and Committee’s report into the finances and sustainability recognised these financial barriers. For housing associations to have the confidence to plan for the future and help the government meet its ambition of building 1.5m homes, certainty of rental income and urgent funding is needed at this year’s Autumn Budget and Spending Review.

A new Affordable Homes Programme would be pivotal in supporting the social housing sector to build the number of homes the country needs. Ideally this would shift focus towards social rent, with greater flexibilities around grant rates and funding for regeneration. To deliver the step change needed in the delivery of social housing, a new Affordable Homes Programme would need to provide £4.6bn of funding per year on average for the first Parliament, on a minimum five-year rolling basis.  

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund (formerly the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund) is also playing a crucial role in helping the country to meet its net zero targets. However the sector will need to invest up to £50,000 per home by 2050 to ensure they are safe, high quality, decarbonised, and meet new regulatory requirements. The introduction of a new long-term Social Housing Investment Fund of £2bn per year would allow housing associations to continue their vital work in ensuring their homes are sustainable and fit for the future, while unlocking capacity for the supply of new homes.

There is also a crisis in supported housing which provides homes with support, supervision and care. NHF research shows that one in three supported housing providers have been forced to close services such as women’s refuges, homeless hostels, and older people’s housing over the past twelve months, due to the worsening impacts of funding cuts and rising costs. Without supported housing, an additional 71,000 people would be homeless or at risk of homelessness, we would need 14,000 more inpatient psychiatric places, 2,500 additional places in residential care and 2,000 more prison places. That’s why the government must reinstate ring-fenced funding for housing related support, with at least £1.6bn per year of funding, to ensure the continued viability of this vital provision.

Uncertainty around rents has also stopped housing associations from effectively planning for the future. A commitment from the government to a 10-year rent settlement would give social landlords the certainty they need to plan investment over the long-term while ensuring social rents remain affordable for residents. Alongside this, widening access to the Building Safety Fund to cover social housing, would help relieve the some of the financial pressures so many housing associations are facing.

The beginning of a new parliamentary term is the best time for bold action and long-term thinking, and that’s exactly what is needed for the government to be able to meet its housebuilding ambitions. Housing associations are ready to work with the new government to build the affordable homes the country needs and end the housing crisis for good.

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Delivering a Fairer Housing in Westminster

Langdale House, part of the legendary Churchill Gardens Estate in Westminster, image by Images George Rex licensed under (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

For many of us in local government, a pro-social housing and house building national government isn’t just a welcome relief, but a necessity to give our tenants, leaseholders and residents the compassion, dignity and security they deserve.

Labour’s manifesto promises to support councils to build their capacity and make a greater contribution to affordable housing supply. This is of course welcome, but must be accompanied by an appreciation of the challenges local authorities already face in delivering fairer housing for their residents. While some components of our story are unique only to Westminster, we think this reflection of our journey gives some insight into some of the challenges faced by all local authorities.

Locally here we won control of the Council in 2022 after nearly 60 years of Conservative control. The previous administration’s treatment of social housing was literally scandalous – in one historic instance using housing as a tool for gerrymandering, the so-called ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal – with a litany of management failures including the collapse of City West Homes. As well as the headline-grabbing issues, there had been a long-standing degradation of the housing service after decades of neglect.

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In contrast, our winning 2022 manifesto promised to build a Fairer Westminster. That meant for us putting housing at the heart of our agenda for change. We promised to take a resident-centric approach to improve housing management, deliver genuine engagement with tenants and leaseholders, and make building new council and lower rent homes the Council’s top policy priority. This was reinforced by the work of the Future of Westminster Commission and turbocharged by a Cabinet Member who has grown up in Westminster’s social housing stock and fully understands the resident experience (and challenges).

Even with our renewed focus, the Westminster housing context has remained extremely challenging. The average house price in Westminster was £954,000 in June 2024, the second highest in London. This has meant that 43% of people in the borough lived in households with an income of less than 60% the UK median after housing costs have been subtracted (i.e. in poverty) – which is the highest proportion of any London borough.

There are of course limited land opportunities for building and development as an inner-city borough. Moreover, supply pressures are compounded by the high numbers of short-term lets and second homes. The Census empty home rate in Westminster was recorded as being 25.4%, which effectively means that one in four properties in Westminster were marked as being empty at the time of the Census, suggesting 30,000 properties in Westminster have no full-time residents.

Westminster also has the highest proportion of private rented properties in the country – making up 44% of the housing stock. The high cost of private rents, supply shortages and ability for landlords to evict tenants easily has resulted in skyrocketing presentations of homelessness. 5,000 households approached the Council for support last year due to homelessness. This has resulted in extreme pressures on Temporary Accommodation. 

Despite this we have made significant progress in delivering on our housing ambitions. Recognising the scale of the challenge we set up our Housing Improvement Programme. New people have been brought in with different skill sets, experience and perspective from across the council to drive change. We’ve taken a structured approach, focusing on key problem areas first, and maintaining a constant dialogue with residents to help shape solutions and priorities. Some of examples of our early successes include:

  • Resident Panels: We have created a borough-wide Resident Panel which is open to all Westminster tenants and leaseholders to support resident input in our policy making. We have set up Task and Finish Groups to focus on specific issues. Our first Task and Finish Group focused on repairs. The Group undertook research and proposed recommendations which have been central to improving our Repairs Service.
  • Housing Repairs: The Panel’s recommendations, and our desire to improve repairs and make it localised and more responsive, is reflected in our new Repairs Policy which provides a clear understanding of the service residents should receive and how the council will continuously improve. To put this policy into action, one step we have taken is to pilot a Direct Labour Organisation (DLO). This is a small team of in-house operatives tasked with carrying out communal repairs across our estates and jointly signing off work completion with residents.
  • Estate Offices: Estate Offices were closed by the previous administration and had created a disconnect between residents and the council. By re-opening offices in communities, we are able to provide more personalised and localised advice and support service for residents. Feedback from residents has been positive and have welcomed the shift in placing housing officers back into the communities they serve. 
  • Understanding resident vulnerability: We identified that some residents’ housing casework is inherently more complex due to their vulnerabilities. A proactive new process for identifying and recording vulnerability for residents was implemented at the first point of contact and to date the team has identified vulnerability for thousands of residents so as to agree on reasonable adjustments. Moreover, we have set up a multi-disciplinary team, the Customer Advocacy Team (CAT), who can be called upon to offer advice for complex cases and visit the most vulnerable to ensure the residents’ needs are assessed.

We in Westminster are of course beyond excited to play our role in delivering on the ambitions set by the new Labour Government and have already made strides in improving our existing services, but this must be matched by an appreciation of the challenges and pressures many local authorities already face.

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The first consumer inspection reports: what they tell us

social-housing-inspection-reports
Apartments block in London by Pedro Ramos is licensed by Unsplash

On 24 July the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) published its first regulatory judgements (RJs) on the performance of two registered providers of social housing (RPs) following inspections under the Social Housing (Regulation) Act 2023. Watford Community Housing Trust (WCHT with 5,200 homes) and Nottingham Community Housing Association (NCHA with 10,500 homes) both secured a C1 grading, meaning they were judged as meeting the outcomes of the Regulator’s consumer standards.

The C1 judgement states:

“that overall the landlord is delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards. The landlord has demonstrated that it identifies when issues occur and puts plans in place to remedy and minimise recurrence”.

Consumer ratings today are very different from the verdicts of the Audit Commission in the 2000s. We are not talking about the delivery of ‘excellent’/’three star’ services identified by the Commission under its inspection regime. While organisations will have the accolade that they are meeting the standards, they will not have the kudos of being able to call themselves ‘excellent’.

The reports offer scant detail about the quality of services and do not provide the evidence the Regulator holds that the standards are being met. As we were advised during the development of the new framework, inspection reports are intended to mirror those produced following in-depth assessments (IDAs) in the housing association sector covering the economic standards. Consequently, the reports are extremely short and are simply a summary of the inspection findings. The NCHA report runs to just 522 words and the WCHT report is even shorter at 365 words.

Looking at inspection methods from other sectors gives us alternative reporting models which RSH could learn from. Both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) produce much longer reports following inspections.  More importantly both regulators use templates that summarise the inspection findings and promote consistency in reporting. The RSH may face pressure to revisit its narrative approach as tenants (and other stakeholders) struggle to draw comparisons between the performance of different landlords.

Will the inspection reports for large providers be longer than those generated for smaller landlords? The first such reports have examined the performance of relatively small providers. Blanket positive conclusions about the performance of large providers with significant geographical spread may be challenged by groups of tenants who may feel that they do not reflect the level of service they receive from their landlord in their area.

The NCHA and WCHT reports set out how the providers have assured inspectors that the consumer standards have been met. However, there are no links to key public documents such as tenant satisfaction measures (TSMs). To improve transparency and accountability, the RSH should consider publishing up-to-date TSMs as part of its inspection reports.

Focusing specifically on TSMs, and taking WCHT’s satisfaction scores as an example, some commentators might be surprised to see the Watford-based provider secure a C1 rating while all its 12 satisfaction scores (bar one) were less than the median score achieved by 196 housing associations in the LOCARLA dataset. This effectively confirms that there will be no clear read across between TSM scores and the ratings that providers will secure following an inspection.

WCHT and NCHA were both due a scheduled inspection, having each had IDAs in 2020. In both reports, all four of the consumer standards were subject to assessment by inspectors. Will this approach be repeated for future inspections? The RSH affirms its risk-based approach to regulation. It might be expected that inspections would be more focused where a document review and the TSMs (for instance) have shown that the inspectors should concentrate on, say, the poorly performing services.

The judgements for NCHA and WCHT, based on consumer inspections, can be compared with the RJs delivered earlier in the month for four providers deemed as failing the standards. The four RPs were each given a non-compliant C3 consumer rating, which means there are “serious failings in the landlord delivering the outcomes of the consumer standards and significant improvement is needed”.

We are now seeing the outputs of the new regime for consumer regulation over seven years since the Grenfell Tower disaster precipitated the wholesale change in state oversight of social housing. A key question arises as the various reports emerge from the RSH about the performance of individual providers against the consumer standards. Will the reports give tenants and other stakeholders the insight they need into the performance of providers? Will the reports make providers more accountable for the services they deliver to their tenants? It is noteworthy that the RSH reports score on the cusp of ‘very difficult to read’ for readability[i]. That suggests they are intended more for professionals than the general public. 

The RSH is starting to roll out the new regulatory framework for social housing providers just as a new government takes over. Ultimately what will ministers make of the nascent regulatory framework? Will they deem it ‘fit for purpose’? We already know that in the health and care sectors the role of the Regulator has been criticised by the new Secretary of State.

But given the in-tray that the new housing ministers face, an immediate review of the regulation of social housing providers is unlikely.

An earlier version of this blog was published by Housing Quality Network

[i] Flesch reading ease scores of around 30-33, listed as ‘difficult to read’ with scores below 30 ‘very difficult to read’