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A weekly round-up of the most important headlines for housing professionals
Good afternoon.
And so the next chapter of the building safety crisis begins. Housing secretary Robert Jenrick this week declared that mortgage lenders should no longer ask for External Wall System (EWS) 1 forms on blocks shorter than 18 metres. It followed advice from the government’s expert panel that such buildings do not present a “systemic risk of fire”. Major lenders Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds support the position, Mr Jenrick told MPs.
Many of the tens of thousands of leaseholders caught up in the EWS fiasco – which has banks demand safety surveys even for houses divided into flats in some cases – will have breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news. In theory, if lenders back the government, thousands of buildings will be brought out of the scope of the crisis.
But for many others, little has changed. If you live in a medium-rise block already assessed as needing cladding remediation, the huge ongoing costs and threat of crippling bills have not gone away. Also this week, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee of MPs expressed alarm at an apparent hint from the government that some could still face “uncapped” costs despite a promised loan scheme.
Inside Housing’s own Peter Apps has examined the situation at length.
Alongside the housing secretary’s statement, the government published a consultation offering more details of its plan for a Building Safety Levy, intended to raise £2bn to help meet some of the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with cladding issues on high rises. Affordable housing will not be subject to the levy, it was confirmed – with in fact only a very small proportion of new development likely to pay.
The housing secretary made other eye-catching comments this week as well. In an interview with ITV News – admirably conducted by Daniel Hewitt – as part of the broadcaster’s ongoing reporting into poor conditions in social housing, Mr Jenrick described executive pay at some housing associations as “out of control”. He also denied that the government should take any of the blame for the problems – arguing instead that it was down to “a lack of compassion and poor management in a small number of councils and housing associations”.
But most revealing was a fleeting remark when pressed on the government’s social housebuilding record. “Not everybody wants or has to be consigned to living in homes for social rent,” he told Mr Hewitt.
Therein, one may be tempted to feel, lies a large part of the problem. Make social housing a tenure of last resort for no-hopers – as Mr Jenrick’s language here suggests – and you create an environment in which poor conditions can become normalised.
L&Q, which is among the landlords singled out by ITV, made two big announcements this week. First, it released a report into the shocking case of one of its tenants who was forced to flee her home in the face of death threats from her racist neighbours, which eventually saw the landlord ordered to pay out £31,000 in compensation for its poor handling of the situation. The highly critical review warned that L&Q’s failure to “deal with racist incidents in a timely manner” leaves it “open to the charge that is enabling racism”. L&Q has accepted its failings and put an action plan in place, and said it hoped to “spearhead a broader debate” by publishing the findings.
Then, it announced plans to spend a whopping £1.9bn on improving its existing homes over the next seven years, in what it claims is the largest investment of its kind in the history of social housing.
Finally, this week bore uncommonly sombre news. Dawn Foster, a former Inside Housing journalist, has passed away at the age of 34. Jess McCabe wrote tenderly about Dawn, with help from the memories of those who worked with her.
Nathaniel Barker, deputy news editor
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