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The Week in Housing: red tape cut comes with building safety promise
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The Week in Housing: red tape cut comes with building safety promise #UKhousingA weekly round-up of the most important headlines for housing professionals #UKhousingGood afternoon.
This week, chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered a speech that aimed to alleviate months of pressure from businesses since Labour’s Budget in October.
Meeting head on the concern about job cuts and price rises, Ms Reeves is hoping to build momentum around the forthcoming Planning and Infrastructure Bill. This will aim to “streamline the development of critical infrastructure” by removing red tape, particularly around environmental assessments.
The chancellor reiterated that the drive to speed up the planning process will not come at the expense of pledges made on building safety requirements in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.
In response to the speech, sector bodies raised concerns about investment, local government capacity, the need for skills and workforce training, and deregulation.
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More pointedly, the G15 group of London’s largest housing associations told the Treasury to reconsider the building of social housing as an asset that contributes to the UK’s national infrastructure and supports growth, rather than adding to national debt.
Ms Reeves is hoping to unlock “untapped” land near commuter train stations in a bid to build more homes for “working people” as part of her quest for growth.
Getting more better-quality social homes built faster cannot come soon enough. The social housing waiting list in the capital is now at a 10-year high.
The mayor of London has pledged to invest an additional £10m to tackle rough sleeping in the capital, including a focus on prevention services.
The impact of such a large waiting list was tragically laid bare as a coroner warned the government about the social housing shortage following the death of a man who took his own life after an eviction left him homeless, which led to being separated from his family and living in a vehicle.
This tragedy was reported alongside sobering new data which revealed that the number of children who died in temporary accommodation has risen to 80.
Deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner said: “These truly shocking findings break my heart. No family should ever have to endure such a tragic loss of life and be failed by the very system there to protect them.”
The government has proposed a change in homelessness grant funding to help councils shift their spending away from temporary accommodation and towards prevention.
There is also the issue of standards. So it will be interesting to see where Whitehall thinks it can cut red tape and drive up standards at a time when the National Housing Federation is trying to get clarity on the nearly 40 firms that were suspended from installing home insulation under official schemes for poor-quality work.
A lack of quality is one of the reasons why some registered providers have stopped buying Section 106 homes. In an effort to address this issue, more than 200 landlords have signed up to the new Section 106 clearing service.
Homes England revealed that 140 registered providers and more than 70 local authorities have registered for the service as potential buyers since it was launched in December.
The government in Northern Ireland is planning to remove intimidation points from the housing selection scheme in a bid to “level the playing field for victims of violence”.
At the same time, the devolved nation’s Housing Executive received 5,300 calls and issued 1,300 emergency repairs as part of its response to Storm Éowyn.
The Welsh government has put its support behind a set of standardised timber housing designs, with the aim of building more sustainable and energy-efficient homes in the future.
The Public Services Ombudsman for Wales highlighted cases where public bodies, including three landlords, failed to make reasonable adjustments for people with specific needs.
In Scotland, a major charity is pushing to ensure Ms Rayner’s boost to rough sleeping funding in England is passed on in full to Scottish councils.
Moving past the additional Barnett consequentials, there were a number of judgements in England that should make for learning in the sector.
One landlord failed to install adaptations in a home for more than two years after it was told there was urgent need for them because a child was going through chemotherapy.
Aspire Housing received a C1 for its first consumer grading and an upgrade to G1 for governance in the English regulator’s latest batch of judgements.
As the sector grapples with all these challenges, Inside Housing spoke to Peabody chief executive Ian McDermott about mergers, housing management and how the sector can build more homes.
Have a great weekend.
Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing
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