Joe Halewood
Supported Housing Consultant
Recent activity
Comments (1267)
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Comment on: Number of private renters closing in on social total
Jono - read any of your beloved private rent figure surveys and they will tell you rents always decrease in December. All reserach puts this down to lettings agents reducing prices to get more people in before Christmas.
If you look at LHA in-payment rates they too show that national average LHA in-payment rates fall in December. It is a seasonal phenomenon and nothing more.
With regard to your cheap jibe about out of date periods and my figures - and the rsationale explained above that its seasonal - your original comment implied your thought the EHS figure was current when its almost a year out of date.
You also forget to state in your convenient use of one months figures of 4.2 versus 4.0%, amonth I have explained is a seasonal abherration that you are using the higher RPI figure of inflation when as you know your beloved coalition has announced that HA will be linked to CPI from 2013/2014 and frozen altogether in 2012/13!!! -
Comment on: Number of private renters closing in on social total
Jono - for % of private renters claiming HB see http://www.24dash.com/news/housing/2011-11-24-Housing-in-crisis-The-future-of-the-private-rented-sector and wher it says
"The private rented sector in the UK has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Affordability issues and, more recently, the mortgage drought has put pressure on the owner-occupied sector. In addition, affordable housing supply has failed to meet the growing demand. The result is a rapidly growing private rented sector. The sector is also fundamentally changing its make-up, with the proportion of housing benefit recipients living in private rented sector accommodation fast approaching 50%."
The EHS report I restate deals with April 2010 to March 2011 and is well out of date. It also used sampling data and extrpolates unlike the official figures such as the HB stats published monthly by DWP.
I'd probably agree with you if you made the argument that its incompetent to take 12 montsh to release a report and its out-of-date figures and estimates are meaningless. -
Comment on: Number of private renters closing in on social total
Jono - try this for starters
November 2008 - 400,000 PRS tenants claiming housing benefit (see http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/111020-gc0001.htm#11102047000444). October 2011 there are 1.240m claiming LHA and 1.582m total private HB claims - a 4 fold increase in 3 years!! -
Comment on: Number of private renters closing in on social total
Jono - Try this from July 2011
"Rental prices in Greater London have reached an all-time high, and are now a massive 50% higher than the national average, new research shows.
Prices have risen by 12% from the same time last year (June 2010), and are now higher than ever before, according to new research by tenant referencing specialist, HomeLet.
The average monthly cost of a property in the Greater London area rose by 0.54% from £1,119 in May 2011 to £1,125 in June 2011, according to HomeLet"
source: <http://www.24dash.com/news/housing/2011-07-22-Nearly-90-of-landlords-expect-rents-to-rise-in-London
That shows that private rents rose by 12% over much of the same period as the EHS released today covers.
Further ones on rent rises above inflation http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14934316
I can source many more if you wish - I'll find sources for the % of private renters claiming HB/LHA shortly -
Comment on: Number of private renters closing in on social total
F451 - the figures for PSL tenants claiming HB has risen from 36% of them in September 2010 to 47% of them by October 2011. Evidence from private surveys shows that is still increasing though as the official figures are 3 months behind when DWP release them as yet what % they stand at currently is unknown.
Discussions (17)
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Arent facts inconvenient?
Yesterday the DWP released the latest statistics with regard to Housing Benefit.
69% of social housing tenants claim HB yet 77% of private tenants claim LHA.
How many myths does th -
HB delays?
"Millions of people who currently claim housing benefit are to be given more time before cuts are introduced. Ministers had planned to introduce a cap from next April on how much housing ben
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Mythbusting
"Benefit chiefs have been criticised by a spending watchdog for failing to cut errors by staff which cost the taxpayer at least a billion pounds a year. The National Audit Office (NAO)
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How can block booking stack up?
Its been reported that London authorities have been block booking B&Bs in Hastings, Slough, Luton and other places in response to the HB cuts and caps.
Yet I fail to see how this can w -
The end of full HB for all?
An article on the Guardian website late yesterday has shed some light on one of the HB proposals in the budget. Specifically the change in LHA paid when moving from the 50th percentile
Posts (243)
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Posted in: Rent increase for 2011/12
Derren - does that calculation factor in the announcement in Housing Strategy that council rents will be the same as HA rents by 2015? This is a 13.2% increase (based on current figures) that is additional to yearly increases.
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Posted in: The future of sheltered and supported housing??
I agree that a near 40% cut in SP wont be the worst. However, Derby City Council needs to make £1.6m per year cuts for the entire Adult Health and Housing Department (budget of £74m) but is cutting £3.4m per year from the SP budget.
Deeply offensive thievery
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Posted in: The future of sheltered and supported housing??
It’s not unusual to hear of local councils raiding SP budgets which are after all discretionary spend to pay for other ‘priorities’ and SP cuts have become almost immune to those in the sector. Yet the following which recounts Derby City Council’s proposals needs further enquiry and comment.
DCC received £8.986m in its SP allocation but proposes to spend just £5.608m and thereby plundering the SP budget for £3.378m per year.
That is bad enough and a whopping 37.59% cut which adds to the £1.14m underspend of last year (DCC received £10.556m yet spent £9.442m) Yet the context is very significant too.
SP sits in the Adult Health and Housing (AHH) directorate that has a budget of £72.8m and needs to make £4.745m savings over the next 3 years. Yet it is taking £3.378m per year or £10.13m over the next 3 years away from it. In short SP cuts amounts to more than double the entire savings needed for the whole of adult health and housing which includes social care.
This is the reality of the ring-fence and grant conditions removal as it allows department heads to steal the discretionary spend that SP is to pay for other mandatory spend items. It not only shows that the ring-fence and grant condition removal is wrong it shows that the SP programme failed miserably and definitively in its original principal aim of placing support on a “secure legal and financial framework”
Raiding money given £1 for £1 to be spent on funding support services for other purposes when it is known and admitted by all that investing money in support delivers savings is economically as well as morally bankrupt.
To plunder savings from funding for vulnerable people is bad enough, to plunder more than double what you need to meet savings targets for adult health and housing and social care combined is pure unadulterated theft.
Perhaps we should be asking how DCC is going to pay for the added costs that removing 250,000 or so yearly support hours will cause for the council and its local taxpayers in the near future. If as the lowest acceptable saving SP produces is £2.68 for every £1 invested then this £10.13m theft will create an added cost / saving foregone for DCC of £27.15m in the next 3 years alone
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Posted in: Rent increase for 2011/12
Sancho you say above:-
"Joe, I am by no means an affordable rent apologist, but what I stated was not my view, it was genuine experience.
You've cherry picked a few statistics to prove a point. I didn't pick the NW or WM and, if you read what I said carefully, I was talking about 'some of the lower value towns' rather than the big cities"
Firstly I dont think you are being an apologist for the AR programme. Secondly, I didnt cherry pick figures - these are figures for the NW and WMs that all.
Thirdly, I agree that in some areas AR may not make a difference, yet these are very isolated and I will be surprised if these 'areas' make up 1 BMRA. There may be pockets within 1 area but not all areas.
The 44,500 regulated rents receive less HB funding than average RSL does (£79.97 compared with £81.11) yet as these account for less than 3% of all private tenancies in receipt of benefit then I'd be surprised if the lower cost areas were more than 3% and hence 97% plus will have (significantly) higher gross market rents rents than target social rent. One report had Burnley as lowest area with a 2 bed PSL let being as low as £295pcm but these are very very small exceptions as the average figures show.
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Posted in: Rent increase for 2011/12
Sanch at 3.29 on 4/11 you said in response to my point
"Joe, what I'm saying is that in some of the lower value towns in the Midlands and the north, the current target rent is already 80% of the market rent so these rents will not increase."
Look at http://blog.findaproperty.com/renting-letting/findapropertycom-rental-index-october/ which is the latest national figures by private lettings agency which states average market prices regionally.
North West £641 - £118.43 = 80% (56% above nat av social rent)
West Midlands £668 - £123.42 = 80% (62% above nat av social rent)Average national HB in-payment is £76.16 and so affordable rent at 80% is still 56% - 62% above the national social housing figure. So there is still plenty of scope for rents to increase by 56 - 62% to reach 80% of market rent.
The figures therefore refute your view that social housing target rents and market rent are closely aligned in the NW and WM or indeed in any of the regions.