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From the archive: social landlords' high-rise fire fears
Inside Housing looks back at what was happening in the sector this week five, 15 and 25 years ago
25 years ago
The Housing Corporation – a forerunner to Homes England – was in the news after Inside Housing revealed it had been lobbying government behind the scenes over grant rates for affordable housing.
The corporation had been arguing that grant rates to housing associations should not drop below 60%. The average at the time was 67% – but the government was understood to be looking at cutting the rate to 55%.
The then housing minister Sir George Young said the government wanted to increase the proportion of private finance in housing association schemes but that a final decision on housing association grant rates for 1994/95 had not been made.
He added that the reduction in average housing association grant rate for rented schemes from 72% in 1992/93 to 67% in 1993/94 had been achieved “through lower costs without any significant impact on the affordability of rents”.
Housing associations had put forward more than four-and-a-half times the number of schemes that could be supported, he said.
“This shows their confidence in being able successfully to undertake schemes at the grant rates available and achieve the higher output that we have sought,” he added.
15 years ago
A report commissioned by the Lord Chancellor’s department suggested social landlords were worse than banks or utility companies for resorting to court action over debt.
Report author Professor Elaine Kempson told Inside Housing that she was “dismayed” that social landlords were “worse, much worse” than other creditors. She called for a cross-sector code of practice on dealing with rent arrears.
The report found little consensus among social landlords on rent recovery, with many failing to distinguish between people who couldn’t pay and those who refused to.
Professor Kempson said there were “too many [social landlords] who are waiting until they get to court before they know very much at all about tenants’ circumstances”.
Five years ago
Fire risk in tower blocks was front page news in 2013 – with a survey of landlords revealing the majority were not convinced their tower blocks would contain fires in the way they should be designed to.
The survey of 233 landlords carried out by Inside Housing with software company Nulogic revealed that 35% of respondents did not believe that “compartmentation” had been maintained by contractors working on their stock and 25% were unsure.
Nineteen per cent of respondents were not confident their organisation had undertaken suitable and sufficient fire risk assessments.
The findings came a week after coroner Frances Kirkham issued her verdict into the fire that killed six people at the Lakanal House tower block, in Southwark, in 2009.
