Spending watchdog attacks focus on new housing
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Councils are putting too much emphasis on new build housing and not enough on upgrading existing stock, a public spending watchdog has said.
The Audit Commission says one in three councils struggles to understand its local housing market.
A report from the commission found 94 per cent of areas had prioritised new build housing but less than a third focused on targets for existing homes. It adds that only one of 139 council housing authorities was excellent since 2000 while three out of four were fair or poor.
It also criticises the ‘confusing number’ of initiatives from government to tackle the housing crash. It says ministers should ‘clarify their objectives, eligibility and scope’ and stress the importance of a strategic approach to housing in speeches.
The report encourages councils to put proper housing strategies in place and emphasis on bringing empty homes back into use, supporting vulnerable people, and adapting homes to allow elderly people to remain in them rather than going into care.
It says improving existing homes could save money, help the environment and have social benefits.
Audit Commission chair Michael O’Higgins said: ‘In tougher times, it is all the more important that councils think strategically and creatively about housing and take their housing responsibilities seriously. This report encourages councils to do that and has good examples of councils that have made a real difference to their residents without spending large sums of money.’
He added that the commission’s Comprehensive Area Assessment system of rating councils will include a judgement of whether council housing policies are ‘joined up and strategic’.
For more on how Comprehensive Area Assessment works see An inspector’s step by step guide
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Readers' comments (7)
Peter | 09/09/2009 9:53 am
Gosh, I thought I was the only one who is opposed to new build (certainly) until we have refurbished existing stock and bring empty properties into used!
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Jan Jarvis | 09/09/2009 11:17 am
Isn't this what they call a false dichotomy? Sure, councils should be bringing empty homes into use, but as a nation we face a huge housing shortage, and each new home built will have to last 400+ years at the present rate of replacement. Councils are building just a handful of new homes each year, and more are desperately needed. The Audit Commission's comments have done no favours for homeless and badly housed people.
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C Knitall | 09/09/2009 11:56 am
This is priceless. The Audit Commission assesses local authorities performance against key CPA targets with a key indicator being the delivery of new affordable homes. So the LAs draw up housing strategies to focus on priority areas & delivery only for the AC to produce a report slating them for doing what they were encouraged to do by them in the first place!
Empty homes are a valuable resource and should of course be brought back into use while improving existing occupied homes is equally important. How about stopping the pendulum somewhere in the middle of the debate so that the bean counters at the AC no longer need to produce pointless glossy reports costing £15 a time. Perhaps efficiency saving could start closer to home.
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kass | 09/09/2009 1:04 pm
"It adds that only one of 139 council housing authorities was excellent since 2000 while three out of four were fair or poor..."
There are some good point here... Social landlords are carrying out an inconsiderate amounts or repairs on old properties with the occupiers living in them never happy whatever the amount spent because these property demand full modernization (if that is the right word) and no patch work will do. What has been the point of having had residents unhappy for decades or all their lives in properties which are just too poor and spending all those massive budgets on patchworks?... All that money would have been saved hundredtimes fold, if there was a programme in place to move tenants out of their poor properties into newly built ones and restore in full the old ones. The moved tenants could have been given the choice to go back to their former home or to keep the new one. But at least the ALL new tenants would be given a home which they could at least enjoy. So we could have had both old and new tenants somehow happy... Instead here we are now, with a chronic lack of social housing new homes and a huge old stock no one enjoys living in.
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people deserve support | 09/09/2009 2:20 pm
Considering that the Audit Commission have been judging local authorities for a number of years now, does that mean that all of its prior inspection reports are meaningless or just plain wrong? The problem is of course that all of those organisations were meeting their centrally set targets so how could they not be delivering? Of course what the Audit Commission is conveniently learning today, because it is politically expedient to do so, is that targets damage learning and improvement and by focusing upon the target you can do the wrong thing by the customer.
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kass | 09/09/2009 4:49 pm
aburke | Wed, 9 Sep 2009 14:20 GMT....
Well, yes, it's amazing - or convenient - but in any case scandalous that they should come with this revelation now when it is a reality that has been going on on such a massive scale for at least the last 30 years and should have been a urgent issue for everyone in social housing at least 30 years ago...
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Bernard Townroe | 10/09/2009 11:21 am
Shouldn't the headline read, 'Spending watchdog tries to cover its backside by aligning itself with expected new administration'?
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