Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-52)
MR KIERAN
WALSH, MR
TONY RUDDY
AND MR
JOHN PERRY
24 MARCH 2004
Q40 Mr Pound: You have talked about the
waiting list and is that about 28,000?
Mr Walsh: Yes.
Q41 Mr Pound: Do you know what percentage
of those are single-person households?
Mr Walsh: I believe 44%.
Q42 Mr Pound: I gave you no notice of
that question! Those 44% would probably not even feature on a
GB housing waiting list or certainly not in London.
Mr Walsh: No, but in other areas
of England they would where there is abandonment or no waiting
list. They would because you can take the position that it is
better to have someone in a house than allowing it to be left
abandoned and causing blight.
Q43 Chairman: Are those waiting lists
disproportionate across community?
Mr Walsh: Yes. The highest demand
areas would tend to be in North and West Belfast and around Londonderry,
but the biggest growth on the waiting lists over the last couple
of years in actual need tends to be in the areas of South and
East Belfast and around the conurbations. So while there is a
need in many Catholic and Nationalist communities, that is very
difficult to be met because of land availability; the increasing
need is in many of the Protestant areas in communities in South
and East Belfast—Antrim, Bangor, Holywood, et cetera.
Q44 Chairman: In the Republic, Part V
of the Planning and Development Act allows for local authorities
to designate up to 20% of all new housing for social and affordable.
Would you support a similar percentage rule in Northern Ireland?
Mr Walsh: No, I would not. I do
not believe the Institute would support a percentage gain, development
gain, to be applied somewhere without looking at what the local
community need would be. The experience in Dublin is that many
of the developers decided not to develop if they had to provide
20% social housing. With the escalating value of land they sat
and did nothing, which meant the building programme actually reduced.
They also said, "We want to build nice, high quality, private
sector housing in this location, we will give you your 20% over
here", which is not within easy reach of amenities or whatever.
Chairman, the link is PPS 12. PPS 12 allows the local tenure needs
in local areas to be addressed and what the requirement would
be for new build housing, owner occupation, private rented sector,
low cost ownership, social housing. So it is targeted on particular
needs in local communities, and that is a better way than some
sort of artificial target imposed from on high. The DSD have looked
at the planning gains and other schemes in the Republic of Ireland,
and I know they believe this is not the time to be fettered to
percentages without any thought of what the future needs are going
to be.
Chairman: The Committee has heard loud
and clear your comments regarding PPS 12, rest assured we will
make enquiries ourselves as to why that still has not been published.
Q45 Mark Tami: In Wales and England there
are decency standards for housing, and Scotland is moving the
same way. Do you think Northern Ireland should adopt this and,
if so, what do you see as the likely impact of that?
Mr Walsh: Yes, Northern Ireland
has to adopt the quality standards they have in Scotland and the
decent homes standards in England and Wales, because we need to
make like-for-like comparisons. We have a house condition survey
which looks at fitness levels, et cetera, which on the face of
it shows that the fitness level in Northern Ireland is below 5%
for the first time in 30 years. That reflects very significant
improvements which have happened in Northern Ireland over that
period of time. If you then compare the 10 point fitness standard
with the targets to achieve Decent Homes in England and the financial
resources required to achieve that, then you are comparing apples
and pears. The 2001 House Condition Survey in Northern Ireland
also applied as far as possible as part of that process what the
decent homes standard would mean in Northern Ireland, because
it is wider than simply the narrow fitness standard—it looks
at adaptations, thermal comfort, solid fuel, et cetera—and
it was found that a very high percentage of the properties within
Northern Ireland would fail the decent homes standard, including
70,000 Housing Executive properties, mainly on thermal comfort.
I think it is important that we apply the same standards so the
allocation of resources can follow the greatest need. But more
importantly, which has not happened with the fitness standard,
a target is put in place to show what you are aiming to achieve,
and a date in time so you can be assessed against whether or not
this has been achieved. There was never any target to reduce unfitness.
There was a review every five years to come back and see whether
or not fitness levels had improved, but there was no target saying,
"We hope to achieve a reduction in five years down to 4%
or 3.5% or whatever." We need decent homes and we need a
target.
Q46 Mark Tami: If the Lifetime Homes
standard was applied to the private sector, how would that impact
on affordability?
Mr Walsh: Lifetime Homes and affordability
are not the same issue. The Institute of Housing in Northern Ireland
along with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation carried out an evaluation
of Lifetime Homes which was introduced by the Department for Social
Development in 1998 for the social housing programme. We did an
economic appraisal of what the cost would be to apply the 16-point
design standard which is Lifetime Homes. In actual fact in Northern
Ireland it is a 17-point standard. We found the actual cost per
property can be achieved at a cost of £165 to a maximum of
£545 per property. That is what you are talking about to
achieve Lifetime Homes. The difficulty is that we continue to
allow properties to be built today which we know will not meet
the changing requirements of people in the future. We will have
to come back and pay more expensive capital monies to adapt and
improve the dwellings, to build downstairs toilets. We have building
regulations—Part R of the building regulations which became
effective in Northern Ireland from April 2001—which make
it a requirement that there is a downstairs toilet. But that Part
R downstairs toilet cannot be accessed by someone in a wheelchair
without leaving the door open. Why do we continue to allow properties
to be built which we know are not going to be habitable by people
or visitable by someone in a wheelchair? If someone in a wheelchair
were to go and visit someone in a private sector property built
tomorrow in Northern Ireland, they could not access the downstairs
toilet. How long could they stay there? The biggest impact to
the community would be by the extension of Lifetime Homes across
sectors. At a cost of less than £550 you can achieve long-term
savings because you will not need to come back to carry out expensive
adaptations. How can we continue to allow properties to be built
at a standard which we know will need to change? If we simply
allow the financial argument to determine building standards by
private developers, we would still be living in mud huts and caves
because they would not be pushing out those standards. We can
coax, cajole and encourage the private sector to build the Lifetime
Homes, and some developers have done that, but the only way to
ensure it happens is by making it a requirement, to amend Part
R of the building regulations, to impose the standard as being
the minimum standard, because otherwise they will not take it
seriously. We certainly commend Lifetime Homes.
Q47 Mark Tami: How well suited is the
private rented sector, in your opinion, to meeting the needs of
social housing and social need?
Mr Walsh: The growth in the private
rented sector in Northern Ireland over the last number of years
has come about to a large extent from the house sales scheme we
talked about earlier. People who bought from the Housing Executive
after three years are able to sell without clawback of discount
or are able to re-let their former Housing Executive dwelling.
Those who have decided to let their dwellings have enlarged the
sector and, therefore, there has been a growth in the private
rented sector. The private rented sector is reckoned to be 49,000
within Northern Ireland.
Q48 Mark Tami: What do you think about
the standards of those?
Mr Walsh: The standards are mixed.
The level of unfitness is highest within the private rented sector
and more work needs to be done there. The other side of that is
the value for money needs to be looked at, because there has been
an escalating bill for housing benefit over the last number of
years from £85 million to over £110 million to help
people remain in the private rented sector. Yet it is the part
of the housing field which is not regulated properly in relation
to licensing, in relation to quality, tenants rights and management
and, therefore, more needs to be done. We welcome the work which
both the Department for Social Development and the Housing Executive
have been doing about trying to develop a strategy for the private
rented sector, and we hope to see the fruit of their labours during
this year, and we are trying to move that forward.
Q49 Mr Luke: This is a question on equality.
There has been a suggestion, and we had discussions when we were
last in Northern Ireland about this, that there are distinct different
housing needs of the communities in Northern Ireland—Protestant
and Catholic. In the Chartered Institute's view, to what extent
has the Housing Executive been successful in developing an allocation
policy for social housing in Northern Ireland which is fair and
equitable in terms of access to the scheme, assessment of applicants
and the allocation of accommodation across the communities?
Mr Walsh: The Housing Executive's
responsibility was to develop a scheme which was fair and equitable
for all. The way to achieve this was to establish a standard base
line for an assessment of the number of points based on need,
so everybody applying to the Housing Executive is assessed on
the same set of criteria, weighted on need and attracted the same
level of points. People can point to the inequalities in that
because allocations at a lower level of points are achievable
in some communities compared to other communities, but you have
to recognise if, for example, a Catholic family were applying
for accommodation and knew they needed to have a certain level
of points for their community, that was a choice they had made
about where they wanted to live. Therefore, they are competing
on the waiting list with other people in that community who have
equally been assessed in the same way. If an applicant with a
lower level of points can allocated accommodation in a neighbouring
community which is not Catholic, those applications are still
going to be assessed along with all the people looking for accommodation
in that area, and allocations are still made on the basis of those
in greatest need first. It should be noted that not one single
case has succeeded against the Housing Executive on the grounds
of discrimination, a record of which they can be justifiably proud.
The Housing Executive and indeed Housing Associations have introduced
a common allocation policy in Northern Ireland which is only aspirational
elsewhere in the UK, where both the allocation of Housing Association
and Housing Executive properties are made from the same level
of assessment when a vacancy occurs. That is something which many
local authorities can only hope to aspire to, as in Northern Ireland
there is not a whole range of different allocation policies where
people are appearing on different lists. The Executive have simplified
that. However, I think there needs to be a review of how effective
that has been and whether there are certain people with particular
needs who under that scheme are not getting the level of priority
or level of points they may previously have attracted because
of their individual circumstances. The CIH has called for a review
of the common allocation and common waiting list be undertaken
in an open and transparent way rather than as part of an internal
review. I also think there are opportunities to introduce an element
of choice to the allocation process which has gained some momentum,
particularly in other parts of the UK in the last couple of years.
That is an area and a development which could be added to complement
the common allocation list rather than simply allocating to the
next person on the list without also looking at elements of choice,
household formation etc. I think there are ways in certain locations
of balancing both of those things.
Q50 Mr Luke: You spoke earlier about
house sales and you rightly made the point that the Scottish Act
allowed exemptions and there are specific areas where the councils
can do that. Given there is a huge pressure of demand in certain
communities in Northern Ireland, in Catholic communities, would
it be the Chartered Institute's view that there should be restrictions
on house sales in these areas so the social housing is kept intact?
Mr Walsh: It is certainly not
our view there should be restrictions in Catholic areas, that
is not where we are coming from. The issue is about housing demand
and not community identity. It is our view that we should be looking
at the strategic use of the house sales policy so if there are
areas of high demand, those areas should not continue to suffer
a net loss of stock where we do not have the ability to meet the
existing needs let alone long-term needs. Therefore it needs to
become much more strategic. If that means no more house sales
in this particular area until we get into a situation where we
can meet the needs of those in need on the waiting list, so be
it. If we cannot meet existing needs, we cannot continue to lose
the stock and then point to the fact we have all these people
on the waiting list. We need to be much more strategic on the
application of the house sales scheme and we cannot simply do
it on the narrow basis that it is fair to everybody if they are
always able to buy whenever and wherever they want to. The consequence,
as I said, is over the next five years we will lose another 25,000
units and then where are the options for people? After all, that
is what social housing is here for, as the safety net for the
most vulnerable in our community. If we say we cannot meet their
particular needs but we apply the scheme fairly to everybody,
the net loss is not the rights or equality of the existing tenants
but you also have to recognise how equal is it to the people on
your waiting list that you continue to lose that level of stock.
It is balancing their needs which is, I think, more important.
Q51 Chairman: We have tried to be as
all-encompassing as possible in our questions, is there anything
in addition you would like to say to the Committee or areas we
may not have touched on?
Mr Walsh: No, Chairman. I would
just like to thank you for giving us the opportunity today and
I hope you have felt we have answered your questions in an honest
and forthright manner.
Q52 Chairman: Certainly we would welcome
any supplementary material if you do think there is anything.
On behalf of the Committee, can I thank you all for giving up
your time and answering our questions so clearly. It will help
our report once it is published.
Mr Walsh: Thank you.
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