Posted: November 3, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, London, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Section 106, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill, ONS |
Originally posted on November 3 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As MPs debated the Housing and Planning Bill on Monday it was hard to escape the impression that the real action was elsewhere.
From the extension of the right to buy to the forced sale of council houses to starter homes, key discussions had either already happened or were still taking place outside the Commons chamber. Yes, talks behind the scenes are an inevitable part of any Bill, but far more so with this one than any other that I can remember. Yes, the Deal removes what would have been a key element in the legislation from parliamentary scrutiny but this is about more than just that.
That’s partly because this is a back of a fag packet Bill that sets out some general principles with the detail to be filled in later. We still know little more about how the sums will add up for paying housing association discounts from forced council sales than during the election campaign. And, as Alex Marsh points out in relation to Pay to Stay, there are whole chunks of the Bill that give the secretary of state the power to do pretty much whatever they like.
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Posted: October 30, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations | Tags: George Osborne, NHF, ONS, public sector debt |
Originally posted on October 30 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Few blockbuster franchises stop at just two films and the reclassification of housing associations in England as public sector will be no different.
The implications from Friday’s decision by the Office for National Statistics (dubbed Judgment Day II: the Reckoning by Pete Apps in his blog yesterday) are multiplying by the hour and are far too numerous for one blog. But here are some quick thoughts on the decision itself – and on possible sequels to come.
So what does it mean? First, and most seriously for George Osborne, it will add £60 billion of previously private sector housing association debt to the public sector balance sheet. The ONS decision says that this is likely to happen just in time for Budget 2016. Whoops! No wonder the chancellor sounded so relaxed/resigned about the prospect when questioned in a House of Lords committee last month (see my blog here).
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Posted: October 27, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Local government, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Social housing, Starter homes | Tags: Brandon Lewis, Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally posted on October 20 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
A few answers and yet more questions: my round-up of the latest developments on the Housing Bill.
An ex-colleague used to speak in awed tones about the time he saw an old-school football reporter compose his match report for the Football Pink as the final whistle sounded. He took a cigarette packet out of this pocket, drew lines on it in the shape of paragraphs, and then dictated a word-perfect report down the line to the copy takers.
Much has changed since the olden days: smoking in public places; laptops and the internet have replaced phones and copy takers; and Pink ‘Uns died out long ago in most cities. But looking back at the events of the past week it seems that cigarette packets remain as popular as ever for drawing up plans – and for things infinitely more complicated than football matches.
This was exactly the metaphor used by an anonymous source in Jill Sherman’s story in The Times last week that the government is set to phase in the extension of the right to buy because of concern over the costs. ‘The Treasury people are hanging their heads in despair,’ the source said. ‘How did this policy that was made up on the back of a fag packet get adopted during the election campaign?’
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Posted: October 14, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Poverty, Right to buy, Section 106, Social housing, Starter homes | Tags: Conservatives, David Cameron, Generation Rent |
Originally posted on October 7 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Forget social housing, any kind of affordable rented housing is living on borrowed time in the wake of this year’s Conservative conference.
In his speech on Wednesday David Cameron announced ‘a national crusade to get homes built’ and go from ‘Generation Rent into Generation Buy’.
The headline policy of starter homes does not look any better than it did the first two times he announced it (in December 2014 and again when he doubled the target in March). The original policy had potential because it offered the prospect of additional homes on sites that would not have got planning permission before. Though there were potential problems, what would amount to urban exception sites looked like a good idea, especially if the uplift in land values could be captured to pay for infrastructure.
But the idea has looked worse and worse the more it has evolved. Research by Shelter has shown that even at a 20 per cent discount the homes will not be affordable in most of the country. Despite an advisory committee on design, there’s not much to stop housebuilders cutting costs by making them starter hutches rather than homes and no mechanism has been suggested so far to check that the discount really is a discount. And even if there is a deal to be had for Generation Rent some of the benefits will go to people who could have afforded to buy at the undiscounted price.
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Posted: October 6, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Local government, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Conservatives, Greg Clark, National Housing Federation |
Originally posted on October 13 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
If the result of the NHF ballot was a foregone conclusion, just about everything else about the extension of the right to buy remains unclear.
With a majority of 93% by stock and 86% by membership, the NHF has a result it can present to the government as a resounding endorsement of its voluntary deal. True, it’s only 55% of those eligible to vote (or, as Joe Halewood argues, 20% of all registered providers) but that presentation is what really counts. Given the dubious nature and timing of the vote, this was always going to be the result (see my related post Deal or No Deal?).
But anyone looking for a response from Greg Clark at the Conservative conference on Monday will have come away disappointed. The communities secretary extolled the virtues of the right to buy, argued housing association tenants have the same ambitions to own as everyone else and delivered the line Tories wanted to hear: ‘We are doing what we promised, we are extending the right to buy to housing association tenants.’ But there was no explicit reference to the deal rushed through in time for the conference.
The omission may just be a demonstration of the political sensitivity involved. Early reports said Clark had watered down the manifesto pledge (something he denied, though the voluntary arrangement may result in the right to a discount rather than a right to buy for some tenants). However, it’s also a reflection of how much has still to be resolved.
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Posted: October 2, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Local government, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Greg Clark, National Housing Federation |
Originally posted on September 28 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
As the clock ticks down to 5pm on Friday, what should really count in the momentous decision to be taken by housing associations?
My first thought was this is like the ‘offer he can’t refuse’ scene in The Godfather. Vote No to the ‘voluntary’ deal on the Right to Buy and you may not wake up in bed next to the head of your favourite horse but you will be inviting Osborne to do his worst in the spending review in November.
Then I thought of the BBC. Looked at in terms of narrow self-interest it seems a no brainer. Better, surely, to strike a deal on the most generous terms you can now than wait for the government to impose the same thing on much worse terms later. That’s exactly what the BBC did before the Budget when it ‘voluntarily’ swallowed the cost of free TV licenses for the over-75s in return for an increase in the license fee.
My next thought was more cynical. Isn’t the NHF a bit like the Premier League when it signed the deal with Sky that excluded the rest of football from its TV billions? Even Sky didn’t make the other clubs sell their best players to pay for it.
And then I came back to the comparison that defenders of housing associations in the House of Lords spent the Spring and early Summer making: the complaint that this is the biggest seizure of charitable assets since the dissolution of the monasteries. Except that as far as I know the monastic orders did not voluntarily agree to the seizure provided they received full compensation paid for by the forcible sale of convents.
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Posted: September 14, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Labour market |
Originally posted on September 14 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
On current trends the first £1m a year housing association chief executive will appear by 2025.
It could happen even sooner than that. I’ve based that on the trend in the five years since 2010, which include two years during the recession when many bosses’ pay was frozen. And who knows what will happen if (when?) the first ‘free’ housing associations are launched?
I say this not to single out the highest-paid individual or the organisation involved. Nor do I deny that housing associations are complex organisations (and becoming more complex) that require skilled leaders and need to pay well to attract the right people. Places for People is far more than a housing association and currently styles itself ‘one of the largest property and leisure management, development and regeneration companies in the UK’ (to quote its website). It says that £330,00 of the £481,000 total pay package revealed in Inside Housing’s survey was attributable to social housing and £151,000 to ‘non-social housing’ businesses.
But that £330,000, and the current average of £183,000 for chief executives of the top 100 housing associations, are still huge sums and they are escalating year by year. The latter is double what chief executives got paid in the earliest Inside Housing survey that I can find (2001/02). Median pay for full-time employees has increased by around 35% since then and has been falling for most of the period since 2008.
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Posted: September 11, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Help to Buy, Housing associations, Local government, Shared ownership, Social housing | Tags: spending review |
Originally posted on September 11 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
With 11 weeks to go until the spending review, final efforts are being made to convince George Osborne of the case for housing.
The trouble is he’s already made it pretty clear he’s only interested in home ownership, may cannibalise what’s left of the housing budget to pay for it and he doesn’t seem to like housing associations much.
What we know so far is that the chancellor wants to cut departmental spending by £20bn and that departments have been told to model for two different scenarios: real terms cuts of 25% and 40%. If that is not bad enough, housing is an unprotected area and so bound to suffer when Osborne announces the details in November, potentially in multiple ways.
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Posted: September 9, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: George Osborne, spending review |
Originally posted on September 9 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Another week, another George Osborne attack on housing associations – but this one comes at a crucial time.
The chancellor’s comments yesterday at the House of Lords economic affairs committee are not the shock they would have been three months ago. In the wake of his hostile joint article with David Cameron and the decisions taken in the Budget and a summer of hostile media coverage including THAT Channel 4 News report, they may be seen as par for the course.
But nobody will need reminding of what is at stake. Ahead of publication of the Housing Bill next month, discussions continue with the National Housing Federation over implementation of the extension of the right to buy. Ahead of the spending review in November, we already know the government will look to ‘refocus’ the housing budget on home ownership and who knows if there will even be a housing budget after 2018.
So the nuances of what he said yesterday matter. And it’s probably no coincidence that he made them where he did: the revolt in the Lords over charitable associations remains the biggest obstacle to extending the right to buy. You can watch here from just after 16:02 for the section on housing but here are some extracts that give some interesting indications of his thinking.
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Posted: August 3, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Budget, Housing associations | Tags: Genesis |
Originally posted on August 3 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Did Genesis choose the wrong book of the bible when it went through its rebranding exercise?
Reading this week’s Inside Housing, and especially the interview with chief executive Neil Hadden, an Exodus out of social housing looks a possibility in the wake of a Budget that signalled that grant will be ‘refocused’ towards home ownership in the Autumn spending review.
Except that this latter-day Moses seems to see a future as a private landlord and developer as the land of milk and honey. He is right to see the Budget as a ‘massive watershed’ and right to see that the government is no longer interested in social, or even ‘affordable’ housing. Rent cuts, the extension of the right to buy, compulsory pay to stay, reform of section 106 to benefit starter homes and possible extension of fixed-term tenancies all shout that message. The spending review only seems set to confirm that the plan is to cannibalise what’s left of affordable housing to boost home ownership. The question is how housing associations should respond.
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Jules Birch 