Government to tackle decent homes failures
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The housing minister has said he is concerned some councils are ‘going backwards’ on decent homes work, and vowed to investigate.
John Healey told the Communities and Local Government Select Committee that his department would assess the progress of the poorest performing councils.
He said 27 councils have seen the level of decent homes drop in the last year, and 10 authorities have more than one third of their stock below the standard.
He added he was ‘particularly concerned’ about 14 councils that had increases in their non decent stock over the last couple of years of 10 per cent or more.
‘I am concerned some of the poorest performing local authorities are going backwards. I want to make sure they are not letting their tenants down and are getting the benefits of lessons learned in their area,’ he said.
Mr Healey said the assessment would be completed by February.
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Readers' comments (14)
Sancho | 08/12/2009 9:47 am
"vowed to investigate". I bet they're quaking in their boots.
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kass | 08/12/2009 10:20 am
"...I am concerned some of the poorest performing local authorities are going backwards. I want to make sure they are not letting their tenants down and are getting the benefits of lessons learned in their area,’ he said...."
Social landlords do not give a damn about what anyone says, especially if it's a housing minister... After all what can he do about it? Would he send the chief exectuives transgressors to jail? Of course not. Would he fine them? Fantastic, they'll pay the fines cutting even more services off thier tenants. Social landlords have become a law unto themselves, that's all there is to it.
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DavidJ | 08/12/2009 12:02 pm
Kass - now you're looking to send housing staff to jail for missing DHS targets? Before hanging these poor souls, why not wait to see what the reasoning behind this issue is, after all we only have to wait until Feb....
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Pete | 08/12/2009 1:52 pm
kass | Tue, 8 Dec 2009 10:20 GMT
"Would he send the chief exectuives transgressors to jail? Of course not"
Please tell me you are joking. Do you really think people should be JAILED!!! for their organisations not meeting decent homes standards. This is utterly ridiculous. What law have they broken? Are they a danger to society and need to be taken off the streets? Obviously not.
"Social landlords do not give a damn about what anyone says"
This again is ridiculous. My organisation is run by a board, the majority of which are TENANT board members, not highly paid executives.
Kass, where does your hatred of social housing stem from? Are you a previous tenant who has been evicted or a disgruntled employee? I would love to know what drives you to condem every article on this site and every week state someone should be jailed. (Despite often no crime being commited)
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Steve | 08/12/2009 3:55 pm
I hope some organisations aren't going backwards because the decent homes funding tap was turned off?
I also await with interest the response to Pete's and David's observations, whilst organising an escape route to a country we don't have an extradition treaty with for our Chief Exec....
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kass | 08/12/2009 4:13 pm
Pete | Tue, 8 Dec 2009 13:52 GMT
If you again are representing the content of my post. Which, for the benefit of others, I repeat in condensed form: social landlords have become a law unto themselves, therefore there is very little a housing minister can do about it.
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DavidJ | 08/12/2009 4:50 pm
Kass - "social landlords have become a law unto themselves" that's right, as they have no regulation (TSA? HCA? Audit Commision? I&PS), do not have to adhere to any legislation (LGA? L&T? CALRA? H&S? HA? + around another 35 which I won't confuse you with), let alone meet the 'normal' requirements of any other business. Yup, they just do what they want without any recourse, isn't it great in la-la land..........
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kass | 08/12/2009 5:41 pm
DavidJ | Tue, 8 Dec 2009 16:50 GMT
Whatever your regulations say getting away with a fine of £50,000 for killing a social tenant is very much being a law unto themselves to me. Even if you only shoplift a cookery book in Tesco, which are so detestable that deserve to be shoplifted, you get prosecuted.
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Paula | 08/12/2009 11:16 pm
This is classic! I am a board member of a round 6 ALMO that has just got 2 stars (the first since the announcement that promises were being broken). However the funding has been withdrawn so we can't improve our decency figures. Of course if the Council didn't lose £12 million in subsidy this year to prop up Councils who haven't managed their money maybe we would have the money to pay to bring the homes up to a decent standard.
I also work for a retained stock organisation that also has a large amount of non decent stock. Of course, once again, if they didn't have £22 million taken off of them in subsidy this year they could have put that money into the decent homes pot.
John Healey wants to take a long look at himself and think about what he is saying before he goes down this route.
Incidentally I agree with others, Kass sort yourself out. Decent homes takes money and you have no idea what the situations of these organisations are. You come across as a vexatious complainer because from what I read that's all you do, along with making sweeping statements of how terrible all Housing organisations are, with no idea of the full facts and often no basis for your rants.
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nicola Rampling | 09/12/2009 9:20 am
My social landlords do not keep up the poroperties of their tennants and leave the most vunerable like myself with mentl healthissues and attempting to brinup my daughter in a one bed flat on one of the most neglected estates in Acton known for drug problems theft and poor designed buildings that eat away at self esteem and confidence in leaving the building the locata choice based letting scheme does not loow those of us who are under considerable stress to be able to move on to appropriate streetbased properties where i was before once a decision made under stress and valium cannot be corrected eve though ones health is obviously affected by the accomodation any one with mh issues should be allowed to move on if thier mh is really affected by decisions made under pressure and standards of housing stock aquired by big housing associations need to be checked by independent organisations i know new buildings have to be a certain size but older properties are never checked.
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