Play your cards right

In any discussion of the future it helps to know the past. Until the introduction of the major repairs allowance, successive governments (and councils) seemed to act as if homes either never deteriorated or that they could be dealt with using the odd shot of spare cash.

The major repairs allowance at last recognised the concept of predictable investment need and, although it wasn’t perfect, the principle was wholly good. The same principles underlie the business planning of other social landlords. More recently, we have had huge sums spent on the decent homes standard. But we are now in danger of going backwards.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies is predicting a 25 per cent fall in housing funding. Yet most of the landlords I see, although they accept tough times are coming, seem to be proceeding on the basis that they will muddle through as usual. What is worse is that organisations like the Audit Commission and the Tenant Services Authority are still shouting about improving standards: ‘Listen to your tenants, find out what they want and give it to them,’ they say. They have to be joking. The chances of providing what tenants want spent on their homes over the next decade or so are small and vanishing. Most business plans are under stress and too often maintenance is already under-budgeted.

We need to plan how we are going to sweat our assets. Savings have to be made - and they will involve real cuts. Cost efficiency has to play its part but let’s stop thinking that this alone will save us. The returns from cost efficiency get smaller as we take them. Instead, we need to set sensible priorities. It is no good building new homes at the cost of the condition of existing ones.

Let’s recognise too that the first priority is the external structure: a new kitchen is no good if water is pouring through the roof. Internally, functionality is the key. We need to keep things working. Carbon reduction and sustainability are great but, apart from the odd opportunity, they will have to be on the back-burner until they are better funded or self-financing.

What else can landlords do? Well, they need to isolate their high repair properties - and do something about them. Twenty responsive repairs a year on a home says something is wrong.

And they have to stop doing daft things. I recently saw a whole estate of houses with plain tiles being re-roofed at God knows what cost. Not a single right to buy house on the estate had a new roof. Condition, not time, has to guide replacement.

Times are tough. The sooner all social landlords recognise this the better. And the sooner the regulators come down from cloud cuckoo land, the sooner we can all get on with the job.

Rob McNaughton is an associate of the Housing Quality Network