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From the archive – plan to make councils ‘social estate agents’ and eco-boilers turned off
What was happening in the sector this week 10 and 20 years ago
2000
A new Social Housing Green Paper was “set to transform” councils from “allocations managers” into “social estate agents”.
Housing minister Nick Raynsford set out the plans at a Chartered Institute of Housing seminar, which said new vacant social housing units could be advertised online with prospective tenants free to pick and choose their preferred property.
Mr Raynsford said the move would change a local authority’s role from “housing allocator to choice facilitator”. The scheme was modelled on the Dutch ‘Delft’ model.
The Local Government Association reacted cautiously to the proposals, suggesting that pilots should be run to prevent “local authorities rushing down one route only to find out it is the wrong one”.
The green paper was also set to begin the process of allowing councils to develop their own specific allocations policies as opposed to a single, national set of rules.
Inside Housing’s leader also queried the plan – asking how it would work in London and the South East, where “there are ever increasing numbers of homeless households and an ever decreasing supply of properties”.
2010
A scoop revealed that landlords were turning off new ‘green’ biomass boilers and powering their estates using gas instead.
With the London Plan requiring new developments to use on-site renewable energy to cut carbon emissions, many associations had installed environmentally friendly communal boilers for their estates.
But with problems mounting over the supply of fuel for the new boilers, landlords were turning them off. One source said: “A lot of housing associations are just installing them to meet the target and then secretly running gas boilers instead.”
Today, housing associations are scrambling to find alternatives to gas boilers, as new builds are required to use a non-gas alternative from 2025 onwards.
