Did the green paper address concerns raised by tenants on Alok Sharma’s roadshow?

Who knows whether this approach was made? If it was, it wasn’t successful, because there is nothing at all in the document about the difference between social and affordable rents.

Since the launch of the roadshows the government has committed to funding some social rent again, both directly and through Sadiq Khan’s London programmes. It also gives welcome confirmation that existing social housing will not be sold off under the high-value asset levy.

This is certainly progress, but there is also the sense of opportunity lost.

3/10

3. Investment and safety

“The view was expressed that a lack of central government investment has led to cuts in services and safety standards falling,” wrote Mr Sharma, in another unusually candid acknowledgement of his own regime’s shortcomings.

There is some cheer here in the green paper. While it was somewhat buried, the suggestion that the Decent Homes Standard could be revised for the first time since 2006 is a major shift.

This would be an opportunity for the government to prescribe higher standards across the social housing sector, and may well result in funding commitments to achieve them – which have gone hand in hand with Decent Homes programmes in the past.

“On the safety side though, more immediate action is needed.”

What is possibly more significant is the tonal shift. Conservative policy documents on housing have been really all about supply, and specifically the supply of homeownership.

To turn their minds to existing social housing stock and investing in making it better – a priority typically associated with Labour administrations – is evidence that at least some areas of government are taking seriously the need for change.

These are not concrete ideas yet, there is no funding yet. But talking about Decent Homes again is a welcome step.

That’s the investment side. On the safety side though, more immediate action is needed. There is spiralling evidence of a systemic issue with fire doors.

Many buildings – private and social – are still clad with flammable materials. Windows and insulation systems pose undiscovered fire risks.

Post-Grenfell, this requires swift action, not consultation, and the government has been too slow too often.

5/10

4. Community

“Attendees noted the need to address isolation and better understand how a lack of opportunities for local residents can contribute to the fragmentation of communities,” wrote Mr Sharma.

It is tempting to file this in the same bracket as tackling stigma, in the sense that it is an objective which is simply bigger than a policy paper.

Isolation and fragmented communities probably have their heart in the way our economy has left certain communities behind over the past 30 years and that isn’t something the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government can reverse.

The introduction of lots of short-term private rented housing to many estates through the vehicle of the Right to Buy has not helped, but this paper was never going to reverse the Right to Buy.

In the substance of what it has suggested, responsible neighbourhood management and tackling anti-social behavior will be included as metrics for the new league tables. Although how you sensibly measure and compare this is a problem left to be solved later.

Elsewhere the paper simply posed the question: “How are landlords working with local partners to tackle anti-social behaviour?” A policy the government wants to address, but not one it has many ideas on – yet.

2/10

5. Communication and tenant voice

The paper is also extremely light on detail about how to improve the crucial issue of resident engagement.

“Are current resident engagement and scrutiny measures effective? What more can be done to make residents aware of existing ways to engage with landlords and influence how services are delivered?” it asks.

It may be unfair to criticise a green paper for not being specific enough, but this is an area where the paper is so green as to be positively verdant.

“It is disappointing not to see something more concrete.”

It has no clear policy proposal at all, and really just repeats a question which it was set up to ask. Considering a year has been spent on the development of this document, it is disappointing not to see something more concrete.

It also floats the idea of “stronger representation for tenants at a national level”. The National Tenant Voice was set up to do precisely this job by Gordon Brown in February 2010 and was scrapped as soon as the Conservatives came to power in July of that year.

You can spin this in one of two ways. One: it is interesting to see the government pendulum swinging back in a direction it has previously ignored, and indicative that this marks a genuine break from the approach of the past eight years. Or two: it is frustrating to be back at the early development stage of an idea that has already been implemented and abandoned once this decade.

Whichever side you come down on, it merits no more than 4/10.

6. Quality of service

Mr Sharma’s letter notes “standards are still low” in terms of service delivery and that “there are no clear ways for management to be held to account”. This is an area the green paper very much wants to deal with: it is something the survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire are adamant must be addressed.

The plan is, essentially, to give the regulator power to intervene on tenant services. As with the above paragraphs on the National Tenant Voice, this would mean the reversal of decisions made in 2010. That era saw the regulator reformed to focus almost exclusively on economic issues. Consumer affairs – repairs, neighbourhood management, services etc – fell under a ‘serious detriment’ test, and the regulator was told fairly clearly not to bother too much with them.

“Will the regulator be expected to investigate and intervene on specific complaints by tenants, or will the Housing Ombudsman Service by given a boosted role in that respect?”

The pendulum will clearly move now though, post-Grenfell, and the regulator will be given some power to intervene more directly in issues which affect tenants.

Will this be through the simple process of including service delivery in in-depth assessments? Will a specific consumer standard be introduced? Will the regulator be expected to investigate and intervene on specific complaints by tenants, or will the Housing Ombudsman be given a boosted role in that respect?

The government clearly wants to get the balance right here. It has legitimate pressure from survivors of the fire and tenant groups to act. It will also weigh the views of lenders and financiers who value the security provided by economic regulation. Neither will it want to make housing associations so focused on service delivery that they forget about new supply. It is a delicate balance, but one where a sense of direction and travel has at least been struck.

6/10

7. Welfare and benefits

The elephant in the spare bedroom. All of those who went to the tenant roadshows said issues around welfare, particularly Universal Credit, were central to the discussion.

The fact that this got a cursory one sentence in Mr Sharma’s letter suggests he knew there would be no action resulting from the Social Housing Green Paper, and so it has proved.

The green paper actually finds time to praise Universal Credit, saying it “supports the rebalancing of power between residents and landlords in the social sector”.

Well it may do, but only in the instances where it is paid in full and on time. Sending someone to a food bank while they wait for their first benefit cheque does nothing for stigma. Putting them in arrears does nothing for their relationship with their landlord. A broken welfare system does not help integrate communities.

This is an issue the Social Housing Green Paper never had the remit to cover. But many tenants will wish it did.

0/10

Average score: 3/10

Peter Apps, news editor, Inside Housing

Listen to a discussion about the Social Housing Green Paper on The Housing Podcast: