Posted: April 29, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Legal, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Starter homes, Tenants | Tags: House of Lords, Housing and Planning Bill, Public accounts committee |
Originally published on April 29 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
The worst excuse for a Bill that I can remember in 25 years of writing about housing limps back to the House of Commons next week.
The Housing and Planning Bill’s tail is not quite between its legs as all the key elements are still there and the Commons will reverse some changes. But it’s been gutted in the Lords, with two more defeats for the government on Wednesday, and this morning (Friday) it’s the subject of withering criticism by the all-party Public Accounts Committee.
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Posted: March 22, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Housing associations, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally published on March 22 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
This concluding part of my blog on Pay to Stay follows up more clues on how the government wants the policy to work. Part 1 focuses on how the tapers will work plus issues about the assessment of incomes and market rents.
Just to confuse things even further, a statutory instrument on social housing rents published on Friday stipulates that the four-year 1% rent cut that applies from April 2016 does not apply to households with incomes of more than £60,000 (in the current or previous year). This is a reference to the existing voluntary Pay to Stay and I assumed at first it simply meant that the relatively few landlords who have implemented it would not reduce the rents of ‘high income’ tenants who are already paying higher rents. However, it seems that as drafted it means that landlords would have to exclude all tenants with an income of more than £60,000 from the cut – even though there is currently no obvious way for them to find them all. Appropriately enough the regulations come into force on April 1.
The Housing and Planning Bill makes Pay to Stay compulsory for local authorities but reduces the household income thresholds to £30,000 outside London and £40,000 in London. Any increased rental income has to be paid to the Treasury. It remains voluntary for housing associations. Here are five more issues raised in the Lords.
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Posted: March 10, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill, National Audit Office |
Originally posted on March 10 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Key elements of the Housing and Planning Bill have faced serious scrutiny in the last couple of days but we’re still not much nearer to knowing how or if they will work.
The frustration of MPs and peers is palpable as they repeatedly ask for more detail and are just as repeatedly told that it will be available shortly. It was all too much even for a Conservative MP on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday afternoon. ‘You’re treating the parliamentarians around this table with contempt,’ Stephen Phillips told two senior Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) civil servants. ‘You’re asking us to take this on faith. Why not do the work first and then bring the legislation forward?’
The answer is of course that it’s much easier for ministers if it works the other way around. Under current plans, the crucial detail will appear in secondary legislation only after the bill has Royal Assent.
The PAC was investigating the value-for-money aspects of the extension of the Right to Buy to housing associations and the levy on forced sales of council houses that is meant to fund it. But members didn’t get far asking for detail. ‘The timings have yet to be determined,’ ran one senior civil servant answer. ‘The amounts have yet to be determined. The formulae have yet to be determined.’
The National Audit Office (NAO) is not impressed either. Here’s its assessment of the government’s impact assessment of the bill:
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Posted: March 1, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Council housing, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Starter homes, Tenants | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally published on March 1 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
For a piece of legislation that’s already faced hours of scrutiny from MPs and peers, there are still gaping holes at the heart of a Housing and Planning Bill that started life on the back of a fag packet and hasn’t moved much beyond it in several important respects.
Opposition demands for more detail about legislation are nothing new of course, but I’ve argued before that the lack of clarity here is deliberate in a bill that is designed to allow the government to do what it wants in future. To take one example, after stretching the definition of ‘affordable’ to breaking point to include £450,000 Starter Homes, the bill adds that the secretary of state ‘may by regulations amend this section so as to modify the definition of affordable housing’.
Many of the gaps were highlighted in the Commons late last year. The last two months have brought little further detail but now it’s crunch time: as peers debate a series of amendments, ministers are bound to come under increased pressures to say exactly what they mean.
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Posted: February 10, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Legal, Local government, Right to buy, Rural housing, Section 106, Social housing | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally posted on February 10 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Start with a fundamental change to the funding mechanism for the right to buy, stir in more changes to key elements of the Housing and Planning Bill, then add criticism of the lack of detail and you have a recipe that shoud give ministers indigestion.
The report of the all-party Communities and Local Government Committee does support both the extension of the right to buy to housing association tenants and the voluntary deal between the government and the NHF is ‘the best way forward’.
But that’s as good as it gets for ministers from a committee that has a Labour chair but a Tory majority. Here is the headline recommendation:
‘The Government proposes to fund the right to buy discounts for housing association tenants with the proceeds from the sale of high value council homes. However we believe that public policy should usually be funded by central Government, rather than through a levy on local authorities.’
This would undermine one of the central elements of the Bill and the government’s method of paying for right to buy discounts and the promised replacement homes. And the MPs are not finished.
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Posted: February 9, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Private renting, Right to buy, Supported housing | Tags: Brandon Lewis, John Healey |
Originally published on January 9 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
This week’s Communities and Local Government questions featured rogue policies, rogue landlords and a rogue house builder.
Rogue policy number one is the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) cap and its impact on supported housing. As Labour MPs lined up to criticise it, housing minister Brandon Lewis pointed to the review expected in the spring and pledged:
‘The changes will come in in 2018, but we are very clear, and have always been very clear, that we will make sure that the most vulnerable in our society are protected.’
That was not good enough for Labour’s Roberta Blackman-Woods, who quoted estimates by Newcastle-based Changing Lives about the losses it and other providers will suffer and argued that the discretionary fund will be inadequate. Lewis responded by pointing to the £400m of funding for new specialist affordable homes in the Spending Review (not much use if housing benefit won’t cover the rent) and the £5.3bn Better Care Fund (which is about health and social care, not housing).
But it was not good enough for Tory MP Peter Aldous either, who called for urgent clarity on whether the cap applies to homeless hostels and foyers. ‘If it does not, there is a real worry that many will close and that, as a result, there will be an unnecessary rise in the numbers of young homeless people.’
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Posted: January 27, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Local government, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Rural housing, Social housing, Starter homes | Tags: Housing and Planning Bill |
Originally posted on January 27 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Part 1 of this blog covered the opening skirmishes in the Lords on the Housing Bill. This second part covers all-party criticism of the detail of the Bill where the sums don’t add up or don’t exist yet. What are the prospects for changes?
Starter homes. Peers criticised both their affordability and the fact that the discount disappears into the back pocket of the first buyer. As Labour’s Baroness Andrews put it:
‘We know from all the evidence that starter homes are not even affordable for most low and middle-income families, whether in rural areas or central London. However, it is not even a fair policy for future buyers. The 20% discount will apply only to the first tranche of buyers; they will be free to sell their assets after five years at market value. We will be minting a new generation of property speculators.’
Tory peer Viscount Eccles said the scheme had ‘not been thoroughly thought through’ and called for much more detail.
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Posted: January 13, 2016 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Housing associations, Local government, London, Pay to stay, Right to buy, Social housing, Tenants | Tags: Brandon Lewis, Greg Clark, Housing and Planning Bill, John Healey |
Originally posted on January 13 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
If it is an achievement to pilot a Bill through the House of Commons and end up with legislation that is worse than what you started with, then congratulations Brandon Lewis and Greg Clark.
Back in October I blogged that the Housing and Planning Bill is written on the back of a fag packet. On Tuesday it completed its report stage and got a third reading with additions and amendments scribbled all over the front as well. It was hard to disagree with the verdict of shadow housing minister John Healey in his closing speech: ‘Usually, we hope to improve a Bill as it goes through the House. This was a bad Bill; it is now a very bad Bill.’
Healey cited late amendments to change the definition of ‘affordable’ to include starter homes costing up to £450,000 (‘the Government are not building enough affordable homes, so they are simply branding more homes as affordable’) and to force councils to offer fixed-term tenancies (‘meaning the end of long-term rented housing, the end of a stable home for many children as they go through school, and the end of security for pensioners who move into bungalows or sheltered flats later in life’).
It was hard to disagree either with his view that ‘the Bill sounds the death knell for social housing’. That much will be obvious to anyone working in housing or who has followed the progress of the Bill. The tab for the Conservative manifesto pledges of extending the right to buy and building 200,000 starter homes is effectively being picked up by councils that still own their homes, tenants and people who will not get the chance of a social tenancy in future.
The Bill accelerates the slow death of social housing through a combination of deliberate culling (forced sales, Pay to Stay and fixed term tenancies for council housing), euthanasia (voluntary right to buy for housing associations plus conversions) and redefining the conditions for life (‘affordable’ will now not just mean starter homes but anything the secretary of state says). It is also now official that a private rented home does not have to be fit for human habitation.
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Posted: December 31, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing associations, Housing benefit, Local government, Pay to stay, Poverty, Right to buy, Scotland, Social housing, Tax credits, Wales |
Originally published on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
My look back at the year in housing on my blog concludes with five more big issues including the future of social landlords, welfare reform and poverty. For Part 1 go here.
6) Wrong or right to buy
Nothing sums up how just much turned on the election result as what happened with the Right to Buy. In February I blogged about the clarification that meant even fewer homes sold under the existing policy were being replaced than previously thought. April brought a buccaneering Tory pledge to extend it to housing association tenants and fund it by forcing councils the sell their ‘expensive’ stock. It was hard to see how it could possibly stack up except as a political gimmick but that was pretty much the point. It was an eye-catching election promise by a party desperate for victory and it seemed designed as a manifesto commitment that could be traded away in coalition negotiations.
Except that it worked. The Tories were unexpectedly elected with an overall majority and the mash-up of think tank proposals written on the back of an envelope somehow had to be implemented. The results would be disastrous for local authorities and the government faced a long battle in the House of Lords. And then everything changed all over again as the most vociferous opponents of the policy decided to accept it voluntarily.
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Posted: December 15, 2015 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housing associations, Local government, Pay to stay, Regulation, Right to buy, Social housing | Tags: Brandon Lewis, ONS |
Originally posted on December 15 on Inside Edge 2, my blog for Inside Housing
Tuesday morning’s announcement by Brandon Lewis on deregulation of housing associations delivers on the government’s side of The Deal and its pledge to get them reclassified as soon as possible,
However, it also completes the division of what we used to call the housing ‘sector’ into two very different camps: councils forced to do what the government says; and associations giving a new meaning to the ‘voluntary’ sector.
The housing minister told the Communities and Local Government Committee that amendments will be laid to the Housing and Planning Bill aimed at enabling the ONS to re-reclassify housing associations as private sector while maintaining proportionate protection for lenders and tenants.
The biggest move was to make Pay to Stay voluntary for housing associations, which is quite a climbdown. However, the amendments will also include removal of the consents and disposals regimes so that associations no longer have to seek permission of the regulator and the abolition of the disposals proceeds fund so that they no longer have to spend receipts from the right to buy according to criteria set by the regulator. More detail is here.
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Jules Birch 