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Rotating housing secretaries James Brokenshire (left), Sajid Javid (top right) and Robert Jenrick (bottom right) (picture: Press Association)
Rotating housing secretaries James Brokenshire (left), Sajid Javid (top right) and Robert Jenrick (bottom right) (picture: Press Association)

What has become of the Social Housing White Paper?

It is nearly three years since government promised an all-encompassing shake-up of social housing, putting tenants at the centre. What has happened to that ambition? Peter Apps reports

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What has become of the Social Housing White Paper? @PeteApps reports for @InsideHousing #UKhousing

“The civil servants have worked hard to make it a continuous process of work, but with every change of housing minister, it’s lost a bit of pace.” What has become of the Social Housing White Paper? @InsideHousing reports #UKhousing

“There is one last chance to get this out and get it right. Tenants are so fed up of waiting.” @InsideHousing reports on the three-year wait for the Social Housing White Paper #UKHousing

“How can social landlords help to create places that people really want to live in, places where roses can grow?”

So said Sajid Javid, former housing secretary, in a speech in September 2017, setting out his vision for a new era of social housing policy in England.

Leaving aside the oddly stigmatising framing (social tenants have grown roses for years without help from Mr Javid), what he promised did sound transformative.

A forthcoming green paper would be a “wide-ranging, top-to-bottom review of the issues facing the sector” and “the most substantial report of its kind for a generation”. It would present new thinking for almost every area of social landlords’ work, from tenant complaints to building safety – starting an all-encompassing programme of reform.


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Nearly three years on, there is little to show for this ambition. The Social Housing Green Paper was eventually published two years ago this week, but the white paper that was supposed to build on its ideas remains unpublished.

“I’m absolutely positive we would have got something through if Alok had stayed in post. He was there in the aftermath of Grenfell and he saw the tower”

With a new prime minister and a new housing secretary steering an apparently different course on housing policy,
Inside Housing asks if we can still expect the change Mr Javid promised – and if so, when?

The delays to the process have their roots in a recurrent bugbear among those following housing policy in the UK: the frequent turnover in housing ministers.

The early work for the green paper fell to the then new housing minister Alok Sharma. He convened a series of roadshows up and down the country, meeting social housing tenants to hear about their concerns. But before the scheduled programme of meetings even completed, Mr Sharma was reshuffled in January 2018, his role filled by the ambitious up-and-coming Brexiteer Dominic Raab.

“I’m absolutely positive we would have got something through if Alok had stayed in post. He was there in the aftermath of Grenfell and he saw the tower – you can’t replace that, and the roadshows had a real impact on him,” says Leslie Channon, a campaigner for tenants who was involved in discussions about setting up a new national Voice for Tenants as part of the green paper work. “But when Raab came in he was just not as interested at all.”

It wasn’t just the housing ministers who were rotated – Sajid Javid left his role to be replaced by James Brokenshire in May 2018, who was himself replaced by Robert Jenrick in July last year.

Sources familiar with the process say that each ministerial change has resulted in delays, with each minister wanting to put their own mark on the proposals.

“The civil servants have worked hard to make it a continuous process of work, but with every change of housing minister, it’s lost a bit of pace”

“I think we would have had something quicker if people had stayed in role for any length of time,” says Melanie Rees, head of policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing. “The civil servants have worked hard to make it a continuous process of work, but with every change of housing minister, it’s lost a bit of pace.”

part 2

Leslie Channon speaks to then housing minister Kit Malthouse, in a meeting set up by Inside Housing (picture: John Robertson)

We finally did get a Social Housing Green Paper in August 2018, but its proposals were loose (“So green, it’s verdant,” according to one insider at the time).

A consultation was supposed to result in a white paper with more concrete policy suggestions, but while that consultation closed in November 2018, no policy document has yet been published.

Why not? Well, part of the answer is that between autumn 2018 and the general election in December 2019, the Conservative Party was consumed by a messy and brutal civil war over Brexit that consumed its political bandwidth almost entirely. There was no space for social housing reform.

“The conversations we’ve had with senior people suggest that it’s pretty much written and would have been published in spring were it not for COVID-19”

Inside Housing understands, however, that progress has not simply stood still. A draft white paper is essentially complete and would have been launched in spring if a flu-like virus had not begun to spread through China and then Europe.

“The conversations we’ve had with senior people suggest that it’s pretty much written and would have been published in spring were it not for COVID-19,” says Jenny Osbourne, chief executive of tenant engagement charity Tpas. “We’re very hopeful of it being published before Christmas.”

“We think it will be around the end of November, start of December – that sort of mark,” says Ms Rees.

For the government's part, a spokesperson says: “We are going to deliver on a once in a generation opportunity to provide a transformative change for social housing tenants - our Social Housing White Paper is at an advanced stage and we have committed in Parliament to publishing later this year."

So, assuming it is published this year, what will be in it?

The original Social Housing Green Paper organised its thoughts into five chapter headings: tackling stigma; expanding supply and supporting homeownership; effective resolution of complaints; empowering residents and strengthening communities; and ensuring homes are safe and decent.

For better or worse, three of these headings are now being addressed under separate work programmes. The government has plans for future supply, the Housing Ombudsman is being revamped and a new Building Safety Bill is making its way through parliament.

Whatever you make of the merits of these efforts (and they all have their shortcomings) the Social Housing White Paper is unlikely to change their direction. That leaves tackling stigma, empowering residents and strengthening the regulator.

The most concrete work appears likely to surround regulation.

The last of these is the one where change is particularly expected. The regulator currently remains subject to a legal test that limits its power to get involved in issues relating to a poor standard of service to tenants (the serious detriment test).

The green paper suggested scrapping this and creating a new regime of Ofsted-style inspections of social housing providers.

“The big announcement we are looking for is what’s going to happen with consumer regulation,” says Ms Rees.

part 3

Grenfell survivor Eddie Daffarn discusses how he predicted the fire would happen on Channel 4 News (picture: Channel 4)

This is a change that survivors of the fire at Grenfell Tower have pushed particularly hard for.

“We were a community that had identified the issues we were facing and were let down by the lack of [Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation’s] ability to deal with the complaints,” says Eddie Daffarn, a committee member at Grenfell United and a survivor of the fire.

“We tried to raise those complaints just about everywhere but they were never addressed.

“One of the most important things for the white paper to achieve is to ensure that never happens to another community again.”

“At Grenfell United we are contacted on a regular basis by individuals and communities who are having the same problems we encountered”

He adds that he does not believe there has been much change since Grenfell in this regard.

“At Grenfell United we are contacted on a regular basis by individuals and communities who are having the same problems we encountered,” he says. “If housing providers had organically changed their behaviour since Grenfell, that wouldn’t be happening.”

Mr Daffarn was part of an expert committee pulled together by housing charity Shelter in early 2018, which suggested this change could be achieved by the establishment of an entirely new regulator – one to police consumer affairs, and the current one to continue monitoring financial viability and governance.

Still, some believe that the creation of a new, second regulator is unlikely.

“I expect it to remain with the current regulator, because it already exists and that means it can get going quicker,” says Ms Osbourne.

“What’s really important is that however they do it, it is adequately resourced,” Ms Rees adds. “The Regulator of Social Housing is quite a tight set-up and if what they do is going to expand significantly, they need the tools to make it work.”

What then of empowering residents? Here, Theresa May made a specific promise not long after Grenfell that the “legacy of this awful tragedy” would be “bringing [social housing] tenants into the political process”.

But Westminster quickly lost interest in this initiative. A steering group was established to create a new national Voice for Tenants. But as Inside Housing has previously reported, it has now been essentially wound up after ministers stopped responding to its emails.

“There is one last chance to get this out and get it right. Tenants are so fed up of waiting”

There is now a huge gap for a tenants’ voice at a national level: the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisations of England – which at its pomp represented three million social housing tenants – announced its closure in July.

Ms Channon, who was involved in trying to set up the new representative body, hopes that a new regulator would at least empower tenants at a local level.

While some initiatives such as the National Housing Federation’s Together with Tenants have been struck up, serious change has not yet come about.

“There are those in the industry who dismiss tenants as an inconvenience and that’s a problem,” she says. “If someone isn’t watching them, they will get away with tenant scrutiny as a tick-box exercise.”

“There is one last chance to get this out and get it right. Tenants are so fed up of waiting,” says Ms Osbourne of Tpas. “It needs regulation – I’m absolutely adamant on that. Exactly how people end up doing it is within the gift of the board, but there needs to be a push.”

A lot then hangs on the new regulatory powers. Here, recent history must be considered.

It was, of course, Grant Shapps as housing minister in 2010 who introduced the serious detriment test, scrapped the regulator that had been established to police consumer standards and told the new regulator to focus almost exclusively on the governance and financial viability standards important to lenders.

It may prove that it has taken a three-year process of roadshows, consultations and debate to simply reverse a minor coalition-era housing policy.

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