ao link
Twitter
Facebook
Linked In
Twitter
Facebook
Linked In

You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles

Our friend in the North: an interview with Tracy Harrison, CEO of the Northern Housing Consortium

The Northern Housing Consortium’s new chief executive is ready to fight to get the region’s voice heard in London. Gavriel Hollander reports. Pictures by North News

Linked InTwitterFacebookeCard
Sharelines

Northern Housing Consortium chief executive @tjharrison on the need to make the case for housing in the North @NHC #ukhousing

“Northern providers are disadvantaged by government funding programmes,” says @NHC’s new chief executive #ukhousing

“It keeps our members awake at night.” @NHC chief exec Tracy Harrison on welfare reform #ukhousing

Despite being well into May, it is a wet, bitterly cold day when Inside Housing arrives in Sunderland to meet Tracy Harrison, the new chief executive of the Northern Housing Consortium (NHC).

“It’s not been like this recently,” she assures us, with a friendly smile, although she later admits she is already worried about the weather for her upcoming 50th birthday party: “There are 100 people coming – I don’t know where we’ll put them if it rains.”

Poor summer weather might be one of a number of tired old clichés about the North. But when it comes to housing, there is definitely a North/South divide.

The housing crisis in many parts of the North has a very different flavour to that in the South, with the most pressing problems often relating to disrepair and the availability of the wrong type of housing, rather than undersupply.

“There’s a feeling that there’s never been a greater need for that Northern voice”

Ms Harrison explains that one of the consortium’s most important jobs is to make sure that policymakers in Westminster understand the different priorities that exist in different parts of the country.

“Members have said they want us to be louder because you’re seeing greater polarity between North and South, and so there’s a feeling that there’s never been a greater need for that Northern voice,” she tells Inside Housing from within the relative warmth of the consortium’s offices in a business park on the banks of the River Wear.

“The [national] narrative around the housing crisis has exclusively been about supply and affordability issues,” she continues. “It’s just about supply and demand: you build more and you solve the problem.

“What’s different about the nature of the crisis in the North is not only do we need more homes, we’ve a significant issue about the quality of the existing housing. The private rented sector is growing rapidly and one in four homes [within it] is non-decent – that has knock-on impacts.”


READ MORE

Help us fight the North of England’s cornerHelp us fight the North of England’s corner
Housing must not be forgotten when it comes to the Northern PowerhouseHousing must not be forgotten when it comes to the Northern Powerhouse
Northern Housing Consortium chief joins Wheatley boardNorthern Housing Consortium chief joins Wheatley board
What could the future of housing look like?What could the future of housing look like?
What does ‘affordable’ mean in the North East?What does ‘affordable’ mean in the North East?

Last year, the NHC carried out a study with the Smith Institute, looking into the quality of housing in the North. Shockingly, it found that nearly one million owner-occupied homes and more than 350,000 private rented homes failed to meet the Decent Homes Standard. Meanwhile, only 9% of social housing was found to be non-decent.

“We have this perception that if you own your own home and you’re retired then you’re wealthy, because if you’re in St Albans, you probably are,” says Ms Harrison, warming to a theme about which she is clearly passionate. “But in the North, we’ve got an awful lot of homes – many of them former Right to Buys – where people have got low income but also low equity as well, so they don’t have the ability to deal with the disrepair that’s there.

“So the quality of the stock has outlived its useful life – there’s a need to deal with that.”

She blames nearly a decade of underinvestment, coinciding with the start of the coalition and then successive governments’ drive for austerity. While she describes the social stock as broadly “in good nick”, she bemoans the lack of investment in other tenures since 2010.

“The thing that’s different is the concentration of poor stock,” she continues. “You can see it in many towns – concentrations of front-of-pavement terraced houses that are obsolete. They’re poor quality, hard to heat and have high carbon emissions, and they’re causing health problems down the line.”

Ms Harrison also believes that Northern housing providers – both councils or housing associations – are not on a level playing field when it comes to accessing funding for new development.

“Because of the industrial legacy of the North, the cost of building can be very high – significant remedial work [is needed] before you can build,” she explains. “So we’re disadvantaged by that.

“We’re also disadvantaged by the way government funding programmes are shaped. The eligibility for them is based on getting the highest return for the lowest level of investment. But that disadvantages the North, where values are typically lower.”

She says that around 80% of funding from five Homes England programmes – the Housing Infrastructure Fund, Estate Regeneration Programme, Home Building Fund, Small Sites Fund and the Land Assembly Fund – goes to the South, with only four Northern councils able to bid because of the affordability criteria.

That kind of discrepancy is why – according to its leading advocate, at least – a representative pan-Northern body such as the NHC is so vital. She is justifiably proud that an organisation of just 32 full-time staff boasts a membership comprising 93% of all Northern housing associations, councils and ALMOs. “We deliver a tremendous amount for the size of the organisation,” she beams.

“We’re also disadvantaged by the way government funding programmes are shaped. The eligibility for them is based on getting the highest return for the lowest level of investment. But that disadvantages the North, where values are typically lower”

Ms Harrison has been at the NHC since 2006. Although she only officially took the top job earlier this month, she knew she was replacing retiring chief executive Jo Boaden in December and has been transitioning into the role since then, taking over more elements of policy work.

A members’ perception survey carried out last year has given her what she says is “a strong sense of where members want us to go”.

So what do members want? “They said they saw us as being the voice of housing in the North, but there’s a desire for us to be an even stronger voice.”

Where the consortium has had success is getting political engagement, enticing senior civil servants away from Whitehall to join members on tours of towns and cities. She tells Inside Housing that Kit Malthouse is down to do one in November. “We’ll see,” she says with a sharp intake of breath.

Whether the housing minister does tour the North in the autumn or not, Ms Harrison thinks that the government is “in listening mode”. But she admits that the country’s political upheavals sometimes get in the way.

“What has been clear is that housing has become the number one domestic priority. It’s just that Brexit has been all-consuming, so it’s difficult to make progress.

“Brexit has swallowed up all the bandwidth that there is [in government], which is massively frustrating to everybody.”

The consortium is nonetheless preparing to submit some policy demands ahead of the next Spending Review in the autumn. While Ms Harrison will not be drawn on the specifics, she reveals that it “will be focusing quite heavily on the private sector stock”.

And although she doesn’t think there will be any asks “specifically focused” on Universal Credit, she says that the number of residents heading into poverty because of welfare reform is the issue that “keeps members awake at night”.

“It’s an inevitability that it’s going to become more difficult,” she adds. “It’s going to get worse because we’re more reliant on European Union funding than other parts of the country.

“Members have been gearing up for that and doing an awful lot of work to support tenancies and to try to help people into employment or higher paid employment, because levels of in-work poverty in the North are really high. Those are the sort of challenges we’re dealing with.”

“Housing has become the number one domestic priority. It’s just that Brexit has been all-consuming”

Facing such significant challenges, it is probably fortunate that Ms Harrison is an optimist by nature. With Universal Credit, for example, she explains that the NHC has collected data and evidence about its impact but wants to share it with the Department for Work and Pensions “in a positive way”.

She believes greater local flexibility over funding is key to answering some of the questions faced by Northern housing providers.

Yet when asked if it was frustrating to see that flexibility in play in London, thanks to the mayor’s funding regime, she instead talks about the opportunities in the North.

“I don’t want to be negative,” she stresses. “There’s loads of good stuff going on here.”

That positivity obviously fuels her, too. She says she has travelled 30,000 miles visiting members in her car in the past year and is usually in the office just two days a week.

And the sunny outlook comes in handy too, when faced with the reality of the task confronting her and the NHC’s members.

Having been invited to Theresa May’s housing summit in October 2017, Ms Harrison found herself not only the only woman there other than the prime minister, but she was also the only Northern voice.

“I was the only one making the case for the North,” she recalls.
“It underlines the need for an organisation like ours.”

Tracy Harrison will be speaking at Housing 2019, at the ‘Bringing Together Health and Housing’ session on Wednesday 26 June, 2pm, in the Masterclass Theatre. For more information about the event, go to cihhousing.com

Linked InTwitterFacebookeCard
Add New Comment
You must be logged in to comment.