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Shelter commission calls for 3.1 million new social homes and new regulator

Shelter’s social housing commission has called for more than three million new social homes over the next 20 years in its landmark final report.

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Shelter commission calls for 3.1m new social homes and new regulator #ukhousing

A commission by @Shelter makes 23 recommendations to shake up #ukhousing , including changes to social housing consumer regulation, tenant complaints, funding more social homes and reforms to the PRS #ukhousing

A @Shelter commission has made 23 recommendations to shake up #ukhousing - full summary here #ukhousing

In its final report, the housing charity’s independent panel of commissioners, which includes ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband and two former Conservative ministers, said this figure matches the number of households who will be failed by the housing market in that time.

It takes account of 1.7 million projected “trapped renters” – younger families who cannot afford to buy – and 690,000 older private renters struggling with insecurity of tenure and high housing costs.

They also called for a new Ofsted-style consumer regulator working across social and private rented housing, as well as a new national tenants’ organisation or union.


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The commission was launched as a response to the Grenfell Tower fire and counts Edward Daffarn, a survivor of the fire and member of the Grenfell United group, among its membership.

After gathering views from 31,000 people – a quarter of whom were social housing tenants – the commission found that “by a very long way, most people thought the biggest issue facing social housing is that there is not enough of it”.

The vast majority of social tenants (85%) said they were happy with their homes, and 77% said they felt “fortunate” to live in social housing.

However, only 19% felt able to influence their landlord’s decisions about their homes, while just 11% reported feeling capable of influencing national and local government decisions about their homes and communities.

The call for a new regulator comes after Grenfell United last week demanded that ministers overhaul social housing regulation by splitting the body into two arms, with one for consumer issues and one for economic affairs.

Analysis carried out for the commission by research consultancy Capital Economics suggested building the 3.1 million social homes would cost £10.7bn a year – but that two-thirds of this would be clawed back through housing benefit savings and extra tax revenue.

And researchers said the programme would pay for itself after 39 years, while existing products such as Help to Buy are less cost effective.

The commission also insisted that building more social housing “is the only credible hope that government has of reaching its target of 300,000 new homes a year”.

Conservative peer Baroness Warsi, who served in David Cameron’s cabinet, said: “We simply cannot afford not to act.

“The government’s budget for capital expenditure is £62bn a year – our housebuilding programme would cost only a fraction and is well within its financial reach.

“With current spending on housing benefit shockingly inefficient, it’s not hard to see what an investment in bricks and mortar could do to help solve the housing crisis and boost our economy.”

Mr Miliband said: “The time for the government to act is now. We have never felt so divided as a nation, but building social homes is priority for people right across our country.

“This is a moment for political boldness on social housing investment that we have not seen for a generation.

“It is the way to restore hope, build strong communities and fix the broken housing market so that we meet both the needs and the aspirations of millions of people.”

The commission’s 23 recommendations will be presented to Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn today.

“This is a landmark report from Shelter and we are encouraged by the overwhelming public support for social housing they have uncovered,” said Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation.

“The report also calls for a rebalancing of the relationship between housing associations and their tenants.

“We support this ambition and have been working with our members and tenants to ensure that housing associations are among the most trusted, accountable and responsive organisations in the country.”

Sinead Butters, chief executive of Aspire Housing and chair of Placeshapers, said: “We want the regulator to regulate consumer standards as robustly as economic and governance standards – they are intrinsically linked.

“We worry that splitting the regulator in two wouldn’t help drive up standards, and would create unnecessary bureaucracy.

“This has to be the moment when all parties agree – more resource and stability for regulator, new or strengthened standards and proactive enforcement, not just relying on the serious detriment test.”

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said: “Providing quality and fair social housing is a priority for this government and our Social Housing Green Paper seeks to ensure it can both support social mobility and be a stable base that supports people when they need it.

“We’ve asked tenants across the country for their views and the thousands of responses we’ve received will help us design the future of social housing.”

Update: at 9.40am 08/01/19 a comment from Mr Brokenshire was added to the story.

At a glance: the Shelter commission’s recommendations

Complaints and regulation

  • The government should create a new consumer regulator to protect renters and ensure their voices are heard. This should operate alongside the Regulator of Social Housing, focused on its core economic brief.
  • Social housing residents need better protection. Government should require standards of social housing to be proactively inspected, publicly reported, and strongly enforced in order to hold failing landlords to account.
  • If residents are to be protected and given a voice, there must be clearer standards for social housing providers. The government should direct the regulator to make consumer standards more specific; setting clear, minimum expectations, like timescales for dealing with complaints.
  • All groups of residents (whether recognised by their landlords or not) should be able to refer their concerns directly to the new regulator where they have common concerns they believe are caused by a systemic failing in the landlord’s services.
  • Residents should not have to prove they might be at risk of serious detriment for the regulator to intervene. The government should remove the ‘serious detriment’ test for intervention in complaints about social housing, which is a barrier to proper enforcement of consumer standards.
  • To make it easier for social renters to get redress on individual complaints, barriers to complaining must be removed. The government should remove the democratic filter for referral to the Housing Ombudsman
  • Residents must be given support to complain. The government should extend the Legal Help scheme to cover detailed advice and support to make a referral to the ombudsman or the regulator.

Tenant voice and involvement

  • Tenant panels should be encouraged and taken seriously. The government and Regulator should urgently require landlords to actively support the formation of tenant panels and share good practice on how this should be done.
  • Residents of social housing must have a voice with national, regional, and local government. Government should support establishment of an independent tenants’ voice organisationor tenants’ union, to represent the views of tenants in social housing within national and local government. It should involveas wide a range of tenants as possible.
  • Residents must have a leading voice in major works to existing homes or neighbourhoods. The government’s good practice guidance on estate regeneration should be revisedto reflect this.
  • The government should compile good practice on cooperative and mutual social housing models. Transfers of existing homes to such models should only happen if triggered by tenants, and if voted for by a majority of tenants.

Reforming private renting

  • Government should require all private landlords with over25 homes to register with the new consumer regulator.
  • The new consumer regulator should set consumer standards for all private rented housing.
  • The government should increase resources for local enforcement to tackle rogue landlords and poor conditions, in line with the growth in the number of private rented properties.
  • The government should protect private renters from no-fault eviction. It should end Section 21 by changing the law so permanent tenancies are the legal minimum for all private renters. It should make sure they are protected from eviction by above-market rent increases. The government should explore how to introduce more detailed information about rent levels for different property types at a ward level.

Building more social homes

  • Government should deliver enough social homes over the next 20 years for the 3.1 million households who will be failed by the market, providing both security for those in need, but also a step up for young families trying to get on and save for their future.
  • Government should reform the Land Compensation Act 1961 so that landowners are paid a fair market price for their land, rather than the price it might achieve with planning permission that it does not actually have. It could do this most simply by; amending Section 14 so that no account is taken of any prospective planning permission in land designated by local authorities or city regions for infrastructure including housing; amending Section 17 so that Certificates of appropriate alternative development cease to apply in those areas designated by local authorities or city regions for development.
  • In future assessments of housing need, government should specify the need for social housing.
  • Government should remove the exemptions that mean Section 106 rules do not always apply to new developments and conversions.
  • Government should ensure that any Right to Buy scheme(s) are sustainable, by replacing any social housing sold.
  • Government should embrace modern methods of construction in a way that reduces risk and builds public confidence, using methods that are proven to work over the long term.
  • Government should set a standard to ensure investment in maintaining and improving homes and neighbourhoods over their full lifetime.
  • Anyone involved in delivering social housing should ensure that new social homes are delivered as part of tenure-blind, mixed-community developments. This includes avoiding design that will contribute to a sense of exclusion, e.g.avoiding separate entrances to the same building that divide households based on tenure.

Click here to read the report

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