New NPPF but no green paper

Posted: July 25, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Affordable housing, Planning, Social housing | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Originally published on July 25 on my blog for Inside Housing.

Pick your moment: the appointment of a new housing minister only two weeks ago; the non-appearance of advance trails in the Sunday papers; or the failure of housing secretary James Brokenshire to rise to Labour’s bait in the Commons on Monday.

They were all strong signals that the social housing green paper, first promised early this year, then in the Spring and then before the recess, would fail to make its appearance by the time MPs went on their summer break on Tuesday.

Challenged over the decision by the BBC’s Mark Easton, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) said that: ‘Providing high quality and well managed social housing is a top priority for this government. Shortly we will publish a Green Paper that sets out a new deal for social housing tenants.’

‘Shortly’ in this context might mean over the recess or (more likely) when MPs return in September (though there is some speculation that tensions over Brexit could see this delayed until October).

Either way, social housing seems to be just as much of a ‘top priority’ as it was when Kit Malthouse became the third different housing minister this year, leaving none of the politicians in place who personally assured tenants that they were ‘listening’ to their concerns.

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The rise of working homelessness

Posted: July 23, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Labour market, Poverty, Temporary accommodation | Tags: | 1 Comment

Originally posted on my blog for Inside Housing on July 23.

Ever since 2010 the government has assumed that work is the solution to poverty and problems with housing.

It’s an assumption that underpins universal credit and it’s been nourished by a steady drip of propaganda from right-wing think tanks and newspapers about the alleged role of social housing in encouraging worklessness.

Anyone with experience of the benefits system knows that this is at best a simplistic and at worst a dangerously inaccurate interpretation of what is going on.

For all the government’s proclamations of a ‘jobs miracle’, work alone is not a guaranteed route out of poverty or poor housing or even, it now seems, homelessness.

A report out today from Shelter shows a 73% rise in the number of families who are in work but homeless and in temporary accommodation over the last five years: from 19,000 in 2013 to 33,000 in 2017.

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What the English Housing Survey says about social renting

Posted: July 18, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Social housing | Tags: | Leave a comment

Originally posted on July 18 on my blog for Inside Housing.

The first in a series of blogs looking at the detailed findings of the latest English Housing Survey considers what the social rented sector looked like in 2016/17.

Nothing has changed

For the third year in a row the survey shows that there were slightly more social homes than 12 months before but the sector is still housing a steadily smaller proportion of the population.

Social housing’s tenure share was down to 17.1% in 2016/17, with housing associations accounting for a slightly higher 10.3% and local authorities falling again to 6.8%. The slow decline – from 21% in 1997 – means that social housing now houses a smaller share of the population than at any time since the early 1950s.

Everything has changed

The survey obviously covers the year before the Grenfell Tower fire and so only hints at some of the issues that will be covered in the imminent (we hope) social housing green paper.

The positive news for landlords and tenants is that the survey shows that fire safety in social housing is generally higher than in other sectors: 1% of housing association and 2% of local authority homes had a significantly higher than average risk of fire compared to 4% of owner-occupied and 6% of private rented homes.

But that will not be of much comfort when the pre-2017 system did not even consider the possibility of inflammable cladding, shoddy construction work and (as the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee points out today) a regulatory system riddled with conflicts of interest.

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The latest new housing minister takes his turn

Posted: July 10, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , | Leave a comment

So it’s farewell to Mr Buggins – many thanks for all you’ve achieved in your 181 days as housing minister.

And it’s hello to Mr Buggins – you appear not to know (or care) very much about housing as you take your turn in the job but then neither did most of your predecessors.

Housing felt the knock-on effects of the latest round of the Great British Brexit Farce as Theresa May decided that Dominic Buggins would be the replacement for David Davis as Brexit secretary.

That Mr Buggins was appointed to the housing job because he was a prominent Eurosceptic and he spent half of his interviews as minister talking about Brexit.

On the assumption that he has decided he believes in the Chequers compromise and can cheerlead for it, this looks like a good appointment for the government.

Which is more than can be said for his previous post. Thinking back over those 181 days, I can remember him using his position to generate publicity about immigration and offering lawyerly denials that the government’s approach to regulation was in any way to blame for the Grenfell Tower fire.

But his major achievement must surely be to have dodged publication of the social housing green paper.

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The politics of longer private tenancies

Posted: July 2, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Legal, Private renting, Scotland | 2 Comments

Originally published on June 2 on my blog for Inside Housing.

When it comes to the private rented sector are we all Chavistas now?

Back in 2014, when Ed Miliband’s Labour proposed a standard three-year tenancy with limits on rent increases, Conservative party chair Grant Shapps was quick to accuse it of ‘Venezuelan-style socialism’.

Flash forward four years and the Conservatives have stolen Labour’s policy at the last two elections and announced plans of their own for three-year tenancies – and if they are not quite proposing limits on rent increases they are not ruling them out either.

Even two years ago it would have been unimaginable for them to propose anything like the proposals announced by housing secretary James Brokenshire on Monday and first reported in the Conservative-supporting Telegraph on Saturday night.

Indeed, far from increasing security for private renters, Conservative-led governments had spent the years since 2010 attempting to undermine it for social tenants.

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