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More on Housing
By Andy | April 3, 2008
I’m buoyed by Bob Piper’s announcement that in the next Bob Piper’s next goverment there will be a role for me in his Department of Housing. This and other response’s on my previous housing post (both comments and emails) make me think I’ll stick with the topic for a while.
Andrew Brown raises the question of local authority management of housing estates and he is of course right that they have not always been sparkling achievers in this area. But the real issues here are not ones of ultimate ownership. We need to face up to the real challenge of providing rented accommodation in a modern setting and that will mean better tenant governance and so on.
One barmiest features of housing policy from the Thatcher era onwards is that it has placed funding behind changes in tenure. Residents often want the funding, but not the change in tenancy. The challenge is to properly renew both stock and sector and to encourage new forms of participation, regardless of tenancy-type. Investment funds have not necessarily gone where there was the most need but have gone to places that are willing to give up council stock.
The extreme example of all of this has been the recent policy to encourage wholesale stock transfer out of local government. In larger authorities this has been tricky not least because the premiums that have to be paid to pay off the bank loans early - debt redemption - are so high that they can make the transfers unattractive. Edinburgh was the first large authority that faced this problem; they were only able to stack up the programme when the Scottish Executive stepped in to pay the extra debt redemption costs. In England the Treasury has not been so flexible and as a result the deals on offer to tenants here has not looked so good, which explains why councils like Camden and Birmingham lost their ballots. In Birmingham it was difficult to demonstrate to all tenants that they would see a quick investment in their property. When you’re the wrong side of sixty and you’re told you may see some major improvements in ten years (and you don’t really believe it anyway), why should you bother to vote yes?
In these failed stock transfer areas people voted to stay with the ’security’ of the council. This didn’t mean that they were necessarily content with the council or that they didn’t want more influence or that they didn’t see the need for a step change in the quality of housing management. they wanted all of these things - but why couldn’t they have these and retain their council tenancy?
This is a good question. In the aftermath of Birmingham’s ballot going down the city was promised that it wouldn’t be disadvantaged as a result of the vote. But in reality it has been difficult to find another mechanism that would have levered significant, new, investment.
It seems to me that its a pretty blunt sword that simply equates improvement with a tenancy choice. Where local authorities are not hot on housing - maintenance and management - pressure could be put on them in other ways.
There are now many models of better, modern, management, development and planning. As with other areas of public service local authorities could be encouraged to explore these through a combination of inspections, improvement notices, financial penalties and so on. Is there any real need to transfer as a starting point for change? Are we that un-imaginative?
Alan Giles the raises the issue of ‘affordable’ housing. Once we get over Alan’s rants at New Labour and thoughts on Frank Field’s old wardrobe, well, he has a point or two.
‘Affordable Housing’ includes low value starter homes to buy, key worker housing developments and shared ownership schemes, as well as Housing Association development and Council Housing.
Even if this current credit crunch subsides soon it would seem that home ownership is going to be pushed further away, for many people, for some time. So much of our economic programmes are based on continued growth and a rising house market. Alan has a point when he focuses back on rental and public, rented, housing.
So, If I was taking my place in Bob’s administration I’d be getting the policy wonks to focus on:
* New models of management and participation within different tenure settings, including council housing;
* Thinking about empowering local government to plan effectively and creatively with communities and other partners - BUT in such a way that made it clear that had an ongoing role and responsibility for estate development and management.
We can do better than our current system, although it’s not going to be easy to secure the kinds of levels of investment we need. BUt housing needs to0 be at the centre of our political programmes and the best, creative, brains - both policy thinkers and practitioners, need to be focused on the issue.
Housing must come out from the shadows. In should not longer be the Cinderella of public service.
Topics: Housing |
April 4th, 2008 at 6:07 am
Perhaps the answer is we should all join Auntie Tony’s new “religious foundation” (sounds like a holy corset) and pray that the pig-headed Brown will see sense and that backbenchers find a bit of backbone.
Austin Mitchell was one of those MPs who campaigned for the fourth option where council housing was concerned - the New Labour (old Tory) mob did not allow this oiption - indeed, they gerrymandered and ultimately ignored it when a majority voted against HA/ALMO, just repeating the question till they got the answer they wanted