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From the archive - anger at empty homes purchase fund snub

Inside Housing looks back at what was happening in the sector this week five, 15 and 25 years ago

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25 years ago this week- associations disappointed to miss out on empty homes purchase fund cash #ukhousing

15 years ago this week - Richard Best warned about leaving house building to private developers #ukhousing

Five years ago this week - concerns over a government IT system dominated Inside Housing's headlines #ukhousing

25 years ago

Twenty-seven associations found out they would get a share in £577m to buy up empty and repossessed homes on the open market.

However, Inside Housing’s front page story was concerned with the fury of those associations who had applied for the funding – and lost out.

Organisations felt their exclusion from the list was a comment on their abilities and reputation. Len Bishop, chief executive of Hyde, said: “In the absence of any adequate explanations, people will draw potentially damaging conclusions about why some major associations have been excluded.”

Tony Shoults, then chief executive of Metropolitan, which was also excluded, called the decision a vote of “no confidence”. The Housing Corporation responded that a small number would allow it to monitor progress more intensively.

 

15 years ago

Richard Best made headlines in this issue of Inside Housing, by arguing that the private sector shouldn’t be relied upon to solve the housing crisis.

Before his elevation to Lord, Mr Best was director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and used this platform to draw attention to the risks attached to leaving the development of new homes largely to house builders.

“It is not the private sector that’s doing badly. It’s the public and voluntary sector – the councils and housing associations,” he said, calling it “unrealistic” to expect private builders to continue to build 85% of new homes.

It was wrong to rely on private developers to tag on social housing using Section 106 agreements, he argued, when they were unwilling to integrate social housing. Private house builders “don’t have the trust of the public”, he argued.

And private developers were less concerned about building communities, he added. “From their control of the land comes their control of the whole process. They don’t have an awful lot of the characteristics we require.”

Five years ago

Councils were reporting huge backlogs of thousands of benefits files due to problems with a central government IT system linked to welfare reforms.

In some cases, as many as 10,000 files were stuck in the backlog, as the government system deluged council departments with automated bits of information about benefit claimants.

The ATLAS system – which stood for Automated Transfers to Local Authority Systems – sent daily updates on anything from updated addresses to tax credits.

Councils said that the backlog could lead to overpayment of benefits and rent arrears.

Breckland Council said the problems included “wrong, out-of-date and duplicate information being sent”.

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