Straight to work

There have been better years to become housing minister than 2010.

Housing might not have received top billing in the election campaign but the new housing minister will find a plethora of urgent problems to deal with as soon as they get their feet under the table.

The approach taken depends on which party is elected. However, there are some pressing topics which governments of all stripes will have to tackle.

Here’s a guide to the main issues the new minister will have to deal with from day one.

House building

The economic slump has exacerbated the UK’s housing supply shortage as house builders put the brakes on development. The number of new homes completed in the UK dropped from 219,050 in 2006/07 to 171,700 in 2008/09. The Homes and Communities Agency set up a number of programmes to help housing associations to buy homes from troubled house builders and unlock stalled developments. These have arguably helped stop social house building from falling as fast as private house building. However, the Homes and Communities Agency’s £17.3 billion budget runs from 2008/11 and figures for the following years, including announcements on whether its housing stimulus programmes will continue, would have to be made in the next comprehensive spending review.

Whoever takes office will need to find a way to get house building - both social and private - going again. The 2010 Budget promised a ministerially sponsored action group would look at the problems faced by the housing sector. If the Conservatives have got in, they have proposed a radical overhaul of the planning system.

Energy efficiency

No government will be able to insulate itself against committments to make housing more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. The UK has a legally binding target to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and around 27 per cent of emissions come from housing. Each of the main parties pledged to improve energy efficiency in their manifestos.

The new government would also need to finish the work to define zero carbon - a standard all new homes should should meet by 2016. Neil Cutland, executive director of consultancy Inbuilt, said the first two elements of the definition had been settled - although some house builders would disagree - but the allowable solutions are yet to be agreed. The Conservatives’ shadow housing minster Grant Shapps said his party would define zero carbon ‘within weeks’ of taking office.

Reform of council housing finance

Reform of the council housing finance system is especially pressing because some councils and arm’s-length management organisations would be unable to meet or maintain the decent homes standard without it. This would see their housing revenue accounts go into the red - which is illegal - unless they cut back on services.

The last Labour government started the ball rolling by publishing a consultation which proposes replacing the annual financing deal under the housing revenue account with a form of a self-financing for council housing departments and ALMOs. The consultation proposes a minimum 10 per cent increase in combined management and maintenance allowances, allowing councils to keep all sales and rental income, and ways to give them headroom to borrow to build 10,000 new homes a year by 2014/15, in exchange for increasing the collective amount of debt held by councils by £3.6 billion.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have both acknowledged that the housing revenue account subsidy system needs reform but neither has said whether it would implement the government’s plans nor proposed any alternatives. The deadline for consultation responses is 6 July.

Housing benefit

A government looking to cut public expenditure is bound to look at the £17 billion housing benefit bill with hungry eyes. In the Budget, the last government said it wished to cut £250 million by excluding the most expensive rents from benefit calculations.

There has just been major consultation on reform of the housing benefit and local housing allowance system has proposed allowing private tenants to choose whether to have the benefit paid to their landlord. It also proposed continuing benefit payments for three months after starting work in order to make it easier for claimants to get a job. The consultation closed on 22 February. The government has yet to publish the responses or to respond itself.

Sam Lister, policy officer at the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: ‘I would guess people would have been comfortable about the work incentives but concerned about how they are going to deal with controlling high rents.’

Care of the elderly & supported housing

An issue notably absent from the three main parties’ manifestos was how to fund care of the country’s growing elderly population. Labour would continue with the reforms it began in government, which include free personal care at home for those with the highest need from next year and a National Care Service. Its white paper on social care proposed that a leadership group be established this July to take forward the National Care Service and a commission to examine the funding of social care.

The Conservatives have said little about how they would deal with the issue beyond a manifesto pledge to design a system where people voluntarily top up their funding to pay for the costs of care at home. The Liberal Democrats said they would repeal the personal care at home bill and use the money to provide respite care for 1 million carers working more than 50 hours per week.

Public spending

The highest priority for the new government will be to reduce the country’s deficit, which will inevitably mean squeezes on some areas of public spending. The 2010 Budget said housing expenditure would fall by £2 billion between 2009/10 and 2010/11. Another comprehensive spending review is due to define budgets from 2011/12. Meanwhile, the Conservative manifesto promised £6 billion of spending cuts but that health spending would grow. Protection for some departments like health could mean that others, such as housing, lose out.

Whoever has won power, it is clear there are major changes on the way for housing professionals. The Conservatives plan to cut the number of quangos and have hinted that the Tenant Services Authority and the Homes and Communities Agency could be for the chop, while the Liberal Democrats also plan quango budget cuts. It is also uncertain whether the Communities and Local Government department will survive in its current form.

Then, of course, there’s the question of who will be opening the red box. There have been four housing ministers in less than two years. How long will the next incumbent get to tackle this long list of problems?

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment