A sign of the times

Before the general election, the Conservative Party published a dossier in which it slammed critics who claimed it had a radical agenda to alter security of tenure for social tenants.

In the dossier, which listed Labour MPs who had made such claims, the Conservatives pledged they had no such intention. When pushed on the issue by Inside Housing, a spokesperson for the party stated categorically that it had ‘no policy to change the current or future security of tenure of tenants in social housing’.

Yet, 100 days after the election the denials in the dossier are beginning to look a bit, well, dodgy.

Last week, prime minister David Cameron suggested that new social tenants in the future could be handed a home for a fixed period of time. He implied this could help meet the burgeoning demand for social housing and see tenants whose circumstances improve move on. Such a change would mean a fundamental rewriting of the purpose of social housing and how it is used.

So what would the impact of fixed-term tenancies be and is the government likely to face a big fight if it wants to implement them?

Uncertain future
The first thing it is important to be clear about is that Mr Cameron and his ministers have given little detail about how any new policy would be implemented. Front runners would appear to be either making tenants leave their homes if their circumstances improve, increasing their rent to market levels or getting them to buy a share.

The other vital detail is the level of income at which people’s circumstances would be deemed to have improved enough. Would this be simply if they were in full-time regular employment or would there be an income threshold?

Mr Cameron gave little indication of how he thinks this might work - apart from the suggestion reviews would take place every five or 10 years because people could be ‘doing a different job and you will be better paid and you will be able to get into the private sector’.

In a comment piece for Inside Housing this week, housing minister Grant Shapps goes little further, saying: ‘Surely it is right to ask: is it the case that because somebody is in need at some point in their life and therefore gets a council home that they necessarily need it forever?’

Mr Shapps, who sources confirm has been interested in the idea for some time, adds that ‘something better has to be done to make better use of our social housing, especially when we spend billions of pounds on building affordable homes and subsidise the rent by about £35 a week’.

Housing providers, MPs and charities have been quick to respond to the proposals.

Labour MP Karen Buck says she was shocked ‘not least because of the ferocity of the Conservative Party denials prior to the election that they were thinking about changing security of tenure’. ‘There are 400,000 new tenancies issued each year,’ she states. ‘This is more radical to the nature of social housing even than right to buy.’

One senior housing source said the sector had to realise that the new government had a radical approach to housing policy in which the roles of housing providers were likely to change dramatically.

‘We have spent many years trying to build or maintain sustainable communities,’ he said. ‘If what the PM is suggesting is that we are seen as a transient model where people are passing through, it is going to make that job significantly harder. What Cameron has come back and clearly said is “I think you should be a landlord and help people up and that is it”.’

Enshrining the stigma
Tenant groups are also concerned about the implications of any changes. They are so worried that they have already written to the prime minister asking for urgent clarification of his thinking and how any changes would work in practice.

Nic Bliss, chair of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing, said he was surprised because Mr Cameron ‘had publicly made a commitment not to touch social housing tenants’ rights - for current and future tenants’.

He says scrapping security of tenure in its current form would ‘enshrine’ any stigma attached to social housing. ‘Nobody would dream of saying that anybody who lives in other forms of housing should automatically be asked to leave their home after five years,’ he states.

Almost all of the figures contacted for this article raised concerns over how proposals might impact on the education of children from poorer families. Would families be forced to remove their children from good schools - or commute long distances - if they had to find a new home when their circumstances improve?

The coalition has remained tight-lipped about whether it would seek to avoid this problem, or if it sees this as a price worth paying.

Bill Payne, chief executive of Metropolitan Housing Trust, states that on face value the shift away from lifetime tenancies marked a ‘rather knee-jerk political reaction to what is a far more complex problem about how families and households live in communities’.He also raised another common charge - that people placed in what, in effect, would become temporary accommodation would have little incentive to improve their communities.

Some support
The plans have garnered some supporter, however. A Yougov poll for the Sunday Times revealed 62 per cent of adults support time-limited tenancies, with 32 per cent against. One council housing director said there were attractions because of the sheer scale of housing need - but he favoured encouraging people to leave rather than forcing them out.

He said he had reservations about telling someone whose children were settled in a school and who was still not well off ‘sorry, you can manage in the private rented sector, out you go’.

Six months after its publication and the Conservative Party’s dodgy dossier may not yet have grabbed the headlines in the national newspapers.It is, however, clear that the government will face significant opposition if it presses ahead with plans to scrap security of tenure for new tenants.

Unless Mr Cameron can find a way of selling his idea to the UK’s poorest communities he may find he has a bigger fight than anticipated when his own tenure is up for review.

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