Examination of Witnesses (Questions 83-99)
MR RICHARD
KEMP, MR
DAVID THOMPSON
AND MR
DEREK MARTIN
15 MARCH 2004
Q83 Chairman: Could you identify yourselves,
please.
Mr Thompson: I am David Thompson.
I work for the LGA in its Housing Unit.
Mr Kemp: Councillor Richard Kemp,
a Liverpool Councillor and I am the acting chair of the Housing
Executive of the LGA and, as it seems to be a matter of some interest,
I am also on the Audit Commission's Advisory Board for Housing.
Mr Martin: I am Derek Martin.
I am Head of Housing Strategy for Manchester City Council.
Q84 Chairman: Would any of you like to
say anything by way of introduction?
Mr Kemp: I have a very simple
introduction which reiterates the two lots of witnesses we have
already heard, that the Housing Corporation is working in a very
crowded field in all the three areas it covers: investment, regulation
and inspection, and strategy and policy. Anything they do has
to be set in the context of what all the others do and someone
needs to bring clarity to all those activities.
Mr Martin: Could I just make the
quick point that at the last count there were 55 housing associations
active in Manchester but we are creating some more through our
housing stock options.
Q85 Christine Russell: The LGA say that
a new relationship is needed between the Housing Corporation and
the Government. Why do you say that and how would you redefine
the relationship?
Mr Kemp: It is partly because
of the lack of clarity issue we were talking about before. Is
it there to promote policy or to pass down government policy?
Is it there to regulate and what does that mean in the context
of the work of the Audit Commission? It has had a traditional
role because ten years ago it was there with the government and
local authorities, but so many new bodies have come in—Pathfinder,
English Partnership and a whole series of new bodies—and
we really need to seek that clarification.
Q86 Christine Russell: Do you agree with
that in Manchester?
Mr Martin: I think we have quite
a good relationship with the Housing Corporation really and we
do have clarity. Things have changed when we went from North West
to Northern and there has been a change of character, but we do
have a very constructive relationship. I think Hume, which is
probably one of the most successful regeneration schemes in the
country—probably would not have happened without the Housing
Corporation's support.
Q87 Christine Russell: What would you
make the new targets?
Mr Kemp: I think there is a series
of activities they to take with housing associations. You heard
before about stock swaps in Liverpool. They are tremendously complicated
and more help is needed by associations to do that. I think we
do need help with consolidation. The fact is that we are dealing
in Liverpool with 52 associations, none of which are almshouses,
and we have developed a Liverpool strategy for doing that—as
I know Manchester has—but the Housing Corporation should
perhaps be more proactive. Perhaps more contentiously they could
help with breaking up some of the big ones. There are RSLs who
work in something like 80 local authority areas. We have one which
has 80 units; the regional office is based somewhere in the Midlands
and we never see anyone, they are no use to us in terms of developing
strategy. There are a series of roles like that. Secondly, they
have worked for a long time in the field of IGPs investing in
good practice but there never seems to be a dissemination of that
good practice. There are a lot of reports done and it is all quite
earnest, but I think a lot of associations could do with more
assistance in what they do with that good practice. I think it
could be a more proactive role in supporting some organisations
which, if you refer to the Housing Corporation, are fiercely independent.
Q88 Chris Mole: Once the Regional Housing
Boards are getting their local priorities sorted out, how should
the Corporation focus its regeneration activities in future so
that it makes a distinctive contribution to the renewal agenda?
Mr Kemp: Why should it be distinctive?
One hopes it would, in fact, be complementary. One of the problems
we have in the North West is that we have a situation where we
have had a Regional Housing Executive for sometime where the housing
associations, the councils, the Housing Corporation and the government
office actually work very closely together. The housing strategy
is very closely linked to the economic strategy of the Regional
Development Association so in our context we are talking about
a situation which we think should be promoted elsewhere in the
country; in others where there is no cohesion you cannot see that
the Housing Corporation is reacting to regeneration proposals
because those regeneration proposals themselves are not as holistic.
When I talk about what we have achieved in the North West I can
talk to colleagues who are councillors in the South East and say
we never get in the same room as the Housing Corporation so those
objectives are not discussed and shared.
Mr Martin: I think the investment
strategy of the Housing Corporation needs to be more spatial.
The needs of housing in the North are completely different to
the needs of housing in the South. The Regional Housing Board
should be the way of expressing the change of investment the Housing
Corporation make.
Mr Thompson: Clarity, yet again,
needs to be teased out in that the Regional Housing Boards are
becoming more assertive. Their strategic capacity is growing and
at the Region there is also a Housing Corporation strategic and
investment capacity which stands alongside the Regional Housing
Board.
Chris Mole: How do those new boards affect
the relationship between the local authorities, the housing associations
and the Corporation?
Mr Kemp: They could broker them
in places where the do not exist. Where they do exist they come
in as part of the partnership. Again it is easier being Manchester
and Liverpool because we are so big that the Housing Corporation
comes to things we do. There are other authorities where people
are not talking and perhaps in those instances the Housing Corporation
could be the marriage broker that actually brings people together
to help things work more strategically. It is very difficult to
generalise because a lot of this depends on personality. A lot
of it depends on tradition and custom in individual areas. Sometimes
the Housing Corporation should be having a different role even
in different parts of the North West from other parts. However,
there should be a team player and they should be working out with
the other partners what their role is in each individual local
authority area and in some cases even below that level.
Q89 Chris Mole: How should the performance
of the Housing Corporation be monitored and evaluated by the Government
once the Boards have taken over the strategic investment function?
Mr Kemp: It would help if the
Government decided what precisely it wanted the Housing Corporation
to do. The trouble is, it is hard to assess whether they are doing
a good job when no-one is absolutely clear what their job is.
They need hard targets from the Government and clear direction
and then the KPIs that we all have will follow from that. The
question still has to come, are they an independent body which
much be their regulatory role or are they an arm of government
which must be part of their strategic role. They spend a lot of
government money and they cannot be separate for that purpose
from government policy.
Q90 Andrew Bennett: Mr Martin, do you
think the Housing Corporation has its investment programme right?
Mr Martin: I think it did have.
The Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders needs the Housing Corporation
to look at investment in a different way. The social housing tag
is probably pulling them down a bit. I think we need to look more
at affordable and accessible houses and we need to be looking
at different ways that the Housing Corporation can try and protect
our communities. Just because the housing market has failed, it
does not mean that the housing communities in those markets have
failed, they are a mixed tenure. A single tenure approach to the
level of investment that the Housing Corporation will hopefully
be putting into the Housing Market Renewal Fund will be inappropriate;
there needs to be a cross-tenure multi-approach which covers housing
and non-housing issues.
Q91 Andrew Bennett: If we are dishing
out the cake, basically the Housing Corporation has always really
been able to measure need for housing and that is a very simple
factor. Are you saying that is inappropriate now?
Mr Martin: I think that is inappropriate
for the Housing Market Renewal Fund. It is very difficult to measure
housing need when you have empty homes. What you need is the requirement
to make homes in neighbourhoods sustainable, areas where people
want to live, to invest and to stay and play. One of the problems
we have in Manchester is that if people become economically active
and get a job, they move up and they move out. What we actually
want to do is give the quality and choice in our neighbourhoods
that people want to make them stay. The Housing Corporation needs
to be part of that. It is not just about the number of units you
can get for your buck, it is about quality, it is about design,
it is about a range of houses that meets the needs of those communities.
Q92 Andrew Bennett: Some parts of Manchester
still have very long housing waiting lists.
Mr Martin: Yes, some of our homes
which are not in the best condition have the longest waiting lists
and that is because it is a place thing. It is not about decent
homes, it is not about the physical condition, it is about the
place; it is about the neighbourhood and getting that right. If
you can get that right, that is when you have a successful housing
market. We have homes which are well below the Decent Homes Standard
that have a long waiting list. We have homes that meet the Decent
Homes Standards that nobody wants to live in. It is a matter of
getting that balance right.
Q93 Andrew Bennett: Does the Housing
Corporation need new criteria for allocating money, not just in
the Pathfinder areas but elsewhere?
Mr Martin: I think they need to
work with the Regional Housing Board to set the priorities for
the investment in that area.
Q94 Andrew Bennett: That is all right
at the regional level, but how does it dash the money out between
the different regions?
Mr Martin: Within our Pathfinder
we have the Housing Corporation on our Board. We work with individual
housing associations on a scheme by scheme basis. I would say
the Corporation working with the individual local authority should
look at the totality of the scheme not just individual investment
on a project by project basis because what we have managed to
prove is that public investment at the beginning of a project
is sometimes considerably more than you need at the end of the
project. Hume required a lot of public investment at the beginning
and it is now working well without it.
Q95 Andrew Bennett: How do you prove
to the Corporation that more money should be going into Manchester
than should be going into Hull?
Mr Martin: I work and am paid
by Manchester so I only know Manchester's case.
Q96 Andrew Bennett: What is Manchester's
case? Is the Housing Corporation getting it right or do we need
to have some criteria so that we can balance one region off against
another?
Mr Kemp: I also do some work in
Hull and one of the things that makes a difference between Manchester
and Hull for any type of investment purposes is that Manchester
has a very clear vision about what it wants, it has a strong partnership
to try to bring things together, it has evidenced delivery mechanisms
which have shown that they can deliver whether it is public sector
or private sector money, and you can take that from City-wide
level down to neighbourhood. That is difficult for me from Liverpool
to say that about Manchester, but I am more than happy to. In
Hull I would say that those things do not exist. I think the Housing
Corporation and anyone else putting money in must look at all
those things because all the evidence is that if you just invest
in housing need you waste the money. You have to leave rounded
neighbourhoods and rounded communities to protect your housing
investment because that is what people want.
Q97 Andrew Bennett: I can understand
that, but does that not mean that the most depressed parts of
the country get least money and get least help?
Mr Kemp: It means that other people,
perhaps like the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or the Improvement
Development Agency, must go in and help places like Hull so that
they can develop the strategies that are worth investing in.
Q98 Chris Mole: You both say that the
Housing Corporation's funding programmes should be more flexible.
What changes would actually like to see?
Mr Martin: Total cost indices.
Where we are going into areas where the housing market has failed,
we do need to look at changing the very nature and perception
of the place. Applying rigid models of cost and yardsticks against
having to change perception is extremely difficult. Some schemes
cost more because you need to make the statement, you need to
make the argument to change the very nature of the place. It is
that sort of approach, so that you look at projects in totality.
I think the Housing Corporation has a number of old rules for
the way they used to do things. In Housing Market Renewal Pathfinder
we will be doing a lot more CPOs and the Housing Corporation rules
around CPO's work against us. With regard to the Decent Home Standards
we will have to look at our options very seriously, some of which
will involve transfer and the Housing Corporation rules around
future investment and transfer do not really help either.
Mr Thompson: In addition that,
two other areas where the Corporation could improve is diversification
of RSL functions, functions that add up to sustainable neighbourhoods,
the creation of employment opportunities, hard work for RSLs;
and there needs to be some fluency in terms of those additional
contributions RSLs can make and also, as we heard earlier from
David Cowans, the ability to built private housing for sale to
cross-subsidise—as he was telling us—affordable ownership
or rent as a result of those receipts. Also, their investment
strategy could be relaxed in terms of letting go to the implementation
vehicles, be it in the growth areas—the emerging urban development
corporations—where the Corporation should see that there
is a prospectus for the next 15 years being developed, like the
Pathfinders, with outcomes they improve and letting go levels
of accountability to those accountable development organisations
that are going to be running for the next 15 years.
Q99 Chris Mole: Is it not a worry that
diversification can lead to the association taking its eye off
the ball?
Mr Kemp: Not if it is set up properly.
Most associations now are set up so they have charitable roles,
they have commercial roles, and they have regulated roles. The
trick is putting the cocktail of funding and the cocktail of ideas
together to make these things work. I think David gave a very
good example of how an RSL have brought in private sector knowledge
and ability to really supplement its work. I do not think there
is a difficulty, providing people are working to a strategy rather
than just picking off in an opportunistic way in a purely commercial
sense.
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