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Dispatches from Northern Ireland

Nathaniel Barker presents the ins and outs of a two-day conference in Northern Ireland. 

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Dispatches from the NIFHA conference in Limavady #ukhousing

Last year, the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA) annual conference was a little unusual.

That’s because the morning keynote speech was delivered by a civil servant, not a minister. The reason is simple: there were no ministers, due to Northern Ireland’s ongoing political deadlock.

Incredibly, 14 months later (the conference comes a little later this year), the region is still without a government – and so it fell once more to an official to provide the sector with a policy update.

As you might expect, limping on for nearly two years in the absence of any new legislation is extremely challenging for any sector. But Leo O’Reilly, the permanent secretary at the Department for Communities (DfC) – the policymaker representative at this year’s event – memorably remarked that “housing is a prime example of the damage that can be caused” by prolonged political stasis.

Chuck in the small matter of the UK’s imminent departure from the EU, which will likely hit Northern Ireland harder than anywhere, and there was lots to discuss at NIFHA 2018.

The conference travelled to the island’s north, at the stoically pleasant Roe Park Resort in Limavady, 15 miles east of Derry. Inside Housing also made the crossing, braving the high winds of Storm Callum to gauge the issues occupying Northern Ireland’s social housing sector.

Reclassification

While for housing associations in England, Scotland and Wales, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reclassification saga may quickly be fading into a distant memory, for those in Northern Ireland it remains a very real risk. The absence of a Stormont government means no legislation has come forward to make the necessary changes for the ONS to reverse its decision to transfer associations to the public sector. Instead, the UK Treasury has granted a derogation postponing the change – but that is currently due to end in March 2019.

After that point, all the sector’s debt could be shifted onto the public balance sheet, significantly blunting its capacity to borrow. In his opening remarks to the conference, Ben Collins, chief executive of NIFHA, warned that “will have a big impact on finances and make it harder to draw down funding”.

Mr O’Reilly was uncharacteristically candid for a civil servant. In the “worst-case scenario”, he said, where legislation wasn’t passed and Treasury didn’t extend the derogation, there could be “a very considerable shortfall in the funding available for a social housing programme” unless officials at the Department of Finance “reallocate a substantial additional amount of money to the Social Housing Development Programme to cover the borrowing costs of housing associations”.

And Mr O’Reilly poured doubt on the possibility of legislation being passed. The accounting status of housing associations in Northern Ireland is not a “key issue” for Westminster, he noted, which is already having “enormous difficulties even finding space for one single piece of legislation affecting Northern Ireland at the moment”.

So, the sector must hope that either the parties can strike a deal soon or that the derogation can at least be extended.


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Welfare reform

This is another issue which looms large over the sector, not helped by the lack of ministers at Stormont.

As one of its last acts before collapse, the previous Northern Ireland Executive introduced mitigation payments to offset the impact of the bedroom tax. However, those payments are due to stop in 2020. Mr Collins noted that it “will be very difficult to get that extended without an executive in place soon”. If the payments do end, up to 34,000 households across the region could be affected, while cracks in the existing system are already beginning to appear.

And then, of course, there’s Universal Credit. It was actually the day before last year’s NIFHA conference when the new benefit system was introduced to Northern Ireland for the first time, in where else but Limavady. Since then, housing associations in the region have got their own first taste of its impact.

Eileen Patterson, director of communities at Radius, presented an account of that experience which her counterparts across the Irish Sea will likely recognise, with tenants and staff both left confused by the system. By allocating homes for the most vulnerable, she said, “we are immediately putting people into poverty… We are putting people into houses which they won’t be able to afford”. This, she warned, could impact Radius’ income, and so its borrowing costs, and in turn its efficiency and new build programme.

So what to do? “We have got to have knowledge of our tenants’ circumstances,” Ms Patterson said. That includes being able to predict “triggers for change” in their ability to pay rent – such as in children’s age. Moreover, she called on the sector “to gather hard facts and evidence to effectively lobby policymakers”.

Brexit

A topic which should need little explanation. As well as the unknown impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland as a whole, Westminster’s preoccupation with it means many of the aforementioned issues have little hope of being sorted out soon – see Mr O’Reilly’s comments.

It’s worth noting that the stagnation of European Investment Bank (EIB) funding may be seen as particularly galling for housing associations in Northern Ireland, which had started to avail themselves of its offer only relatively recently before Article 50 was triggered. Mr Collins said a return of EIB funding is “something that we hope will be possible moving forward” but for now that remains yet another uncertainty.

Incidentally, a poll of conference delegates found that only 5% felt “very well prepared” for Brexit, while 53% answered: Brexit? What’s Brexit?

Supporting People

Northern Ireland still has a ringfenced Supporting People budget, but it is coming under intense pressure. Demand for services and costs continue to rise while the money available stays the same. NIFHA continues to argue for an increase in the budget – but, again – without ministers to make the necessary decision, resolutions still feel far off.

Ricky Rowledge, chief executive of the Council for the Homeless Northern Ireland, said service providers need to come up with hard, numerical proof of Supporting People’s importance to vulnerable people and savings elsewhere in the public purse, but warned lobbying efforts had to be “realistic”.

The time will come “for a really quite horrendous decision” for the sector about who it aims to help with Supporting People: are resources funnelled into helping those with the most extensive needs, or assisting as many as possible of the slightly less vulnerable?

Shared housing

This does not refer to accommodation in which different household share facilities, unlike the rest of the UK. Here, ‘shared housing’ means simply neighbourhoods lived in by both nationalist and unionist communities.

Tackling segregation remains a key issue for Northern Ireland’s social housing sector. According to the last census, 90% of estates are still ‘single identity’ – while according to a 2017 survey, 78% of people in the region would prefer to live in a mixed neighbourhood.

Eilish O’Neill, from the DfC, summarised that “residential segregation… is the central tension that we face as policymakers”.

Housing associations have developed 10 shared developments, with two of these experiencing high-profile intimidation problems.

But Tim O’Malley, community development manager at Clanmil, insisted that “if we create the opportunities it really does work”, and a Clanmil tenant appearing on the panel described her own shared neighbourhood with loving enthusiasm.

Rather worryingly, a conference poll asking whether attendees felt relations between Catholics and Protestants had improved in the past five years returned a 50-50 yes/no split.

Politicians came under fire here, too: the fact remains that having wards or constituencies made up entirely of single groups often works in favour of those organising electoral campaigns.

Modernising

No doubt it’s a cliche, but with great challenges come great opportunities. Housing associations in Northern Ireland are on the cusp of a new way of working. For instance, Clanmil recently built the region’s first offsite development, while Choice launched the sector’s first private rent vehicle in February. Meanwhile, NIFHA is attempting to encourage its members to start building mixed-tenure schemes.

In addition, the region’s 11 young councils – which were only established in 2015 – appear to be opening up to the possibility of greater collaboration with housing associations, including joint ventures. Niall Sheridan, group director of development and assets at Choice, noted that such deals seem to take place in England “each week”, and said “there’s no reason why that can’t be extended to us”.

Appearing on the panel with him, Joan Baird, mayor of Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council, nodded along enthusiastically. “This is something our council is already looking at,” she said, in the hope of redeveloping redundant council-owned sites, “where it has been almost impossible to develop in the past.”

How all that could change the sector remains to be seen, but doubtless there is scope for profound evolution in the coming years. It’s worth noting that, unlike in England, those debates about whether associations are losing their “social purpose” don’t really seem to surface.

Speaking very near to the conference’s close, Neville Armstrong, chair of Rural Housing, warned that losing this purpose is “something that we in the housing sector need to be very careful about”.