Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
MR GRAHAM
GARBUTT AND
MR STEVE
GREGORY
5 MAY 2004
Q260 Mr O'Brien: On the point that Mr
Gregory just outlined that were accepted by all parties including
the ODPM, has that been something set for other regions. Do you
know?
Mr Gregory: I am not sure that
the process is similar for other regions. Each document had to
be approved by ODPM in other regions. How far they have put that
through their Regional Assembly, I am not sure.
Q261 Mr Sanders: You seem to be in favour
of separating out the Housing Corporation's investment and
regulation function and delegating investment through a single
pot to the Regional Housing Board. Would this mean the end for
national targets in respect of general needs and specialist provision?
Mr Gregory: No, I do not think
that would be the end. I think national targets are reasonable,
but they do need to translate it into relevance for the region,
and there would need to be a rebalancing of those targets to make
it relevant to the region, if that was necessary. The West Midlands,
I think, is quite an interesting region, in that it is the country,
on a smaller scale, that we have both areas of very high demand
and areas of very low demand, so the national target fits reasonably
well within that. One thing we have not necessarily captured though,
just bringing up the Decent Homes issue from national targets,
is, of course, the Regional Housing Board controls, what was the
Housing Investment Programme and the Housing Corporation Programme
(the ADP). It does not control all investment into housing, so
we would need to develop a relationship with the private sector
particularly, which is the lion's share investment into housing,
but also with whatever route local authorities have chosen to
achieve a Decent Homes Standard, those three routes: PFI, major
repairs allowance or arms-length management.
Q262 Mr Sanders: What role would the
Housing Corporation have in regulating investment decisions if
investment decisions were devolved through a single pot?
Mr Garbutt: Sorry, could you repeat
that?
Q263 Mr Sanders: What role would the
Housing Corporation have in regulating investment decisions if
investment decisions were devolved through a single pot?
Mr Garbutt: The proposition, I
think, that we have kind of trailed in our paper is one where
there would be perhaps a slightly greater expectation on coherence
at a national level and perhaps a slightly enhanced capacity between
ODPM and the Housing Corporation to develop national strategies
and plainly within broad Treasury parameters and on the basis
of agreed policy targets. I think, as we are both suggesting,
there would be a national framework both of funding and of policy
and of key strands of housing policy which the regions would be
asked in effect to relate to the regional needs in perhaps slightly
different ways. So the Housing Corporation, through that relationship
with ODPM, would be very much part of that.
Q264 Mr Sanders: In a sense what seems
to be happening is that the centre is passing things down to the
regions. The regions are also sucking things up from the local
area. Is there a danger that there is a gap between what is actually
happening in a community in terms of its need and whether that
is actually being picked up at a regional level, whereas in the
past it may have been picked up by a district authority with a
housing function and was dealt with straightaway?
Mr Garbutt: I would be disappointed
if people felt we were sucking things up from the local level.
Certainly that would be contrary to the May 2002 White Paper's
principles. I think what we are trying to do is to work with local
authorities around their own local housing plans to see how those
aggregate to sub-regions and then to regions. As I said at the
beginning, I think our contribution at the moment, one of the
key contributions, has been to encourage those local authorities
to look across their boundaries, and you do not have to think
very hard about conurbations and relationships between different
authorities in different parts of the country to recognise that
commuter patterns, transport patterns, and so on, require us to
look beyond what can often be fairly arbitrary local authority
boundaries; but that is not, I think, inconsistent with working
with them very directly on often very localised schemes, much
more local than a local authority, perhaps looking at individual
villages, ensuring that the systems are in place to do village
appraisals in rural areas or to look at individual localities,
such as the Housing Market Renewal Areas, and in some of the larger
urban conurbations.
Mr Gregory: Can I pick up the
issue of how we worked it in the region? When we trawled the region
asking each authority and each party with an interest in housing
what they felt the regional housing issues were and we were able
to come up with half a dozen issue, there was a general consensus
over regional issues. It will not surprise you to know that one
of those issues was affordable housing, which was an issue both
within the conurbation and out in the Shire areas. We put that
issue into a research programme. We have done some research into
affordable housing across the region. That has led us, as Graham
has said, to understand that we need to understand that affordable
housing issue across districts. Although the development would
be at a level within a district, the districts really need to
come together to understand how they can address their affordable
housing problem. The problem is probably too great for a district
outside a conurbation to pursue on its own. So we held some research,
we carried out some research to start to understand how the affordable
problem was working, and found that there are two very different
views. One set of research, the Traditional Housing Needs Study,
suggests a major affordable housing issue. A second piece of research
that we carried out with the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies
that looked at house prices against a supply of social housing
against average earnings suggested that the affordable housing
issue was very highly targeted, was highly focused, so it was
not a general problem. We have shared that with the district councils
and we have asked the district councils to form a steering group
to take that research further, with the aim simply of quantifying
that affordable housing problem, telling us how big the problem
is, and to give us a set of criteria as a housing board how we
might allocate resources that come into us over a period of years
to address the problem that we have identified, keeping the authorities
that are experiencing the programme together to help us manage
the process of dealing with that affordability problem. We need
to capture in that not only direct investment through the Board
but also any investments coming through local authorities or section
106 agreements.
Q265 Chairman: Summarising the Housing
Corporation, what you are saying is that perhaps in the past their
investment stream has been a bit separate and what you see now
is at regional level that being tidied up through the regional
board's work and, at national level, closer working with the ODPM
to create the national strategy there as well?
Mr Gregory: Yes.
Q266 Mr O'Brien: The question of participation
of Regional Housing Boards is of significance. How successful
are you at securing input into your strategy from other organisations,
such as housing associations?
Mr Garbutt: I think perhaps, Steve,
if you talk about Regional Housing Partnership.
Mr Gregory: Yes. I lead the Regional
Housing Partnership, which is a very wide partnership, and it
has connected to it several networks. One of the connections is
the National Housing Federation and their regional lead and paid
officer sits on the partnership to help us link up with housing
associations; but associations are also involved through specialist
networks. We have a black and minority ethnic community network,
we have a rural network and we have sub-regional networks, all
of which have representation from both housing associations and
the private sector. We then brought in a specialist network and
some research around regional homelessness and regional supporting
people. Both of those issues have a very large input from housing
associations. As far as my employer allows, I regularly go out
into the region talking to groups of interested parties, boring
them to death about regional housing, housing work and encouraging
them to get involved. I have found no lack of interest, particularly
since the Board was given the job of divvying up resources, no
lack of interest in getting involved in putting the housing strategy
together.
Mr Garbutt: I have also spoken
both to a regional conference that is organised by the NFHA and
to the Regional NFHA Board, so we do make ourselves available
and we listen to them and many of those comments have been taken
back to the Board.
Q267 Mr O'Brien: The Committee has taken
evidence from interested people, and there is a point that tenants
are not having a great input into regional housing boards. How
should the Board facilitate tenant input?
Mr Gregory: I think that is quite
an interesting one that we need to do some more work on. I think
the input at the moment is through the district housing strategies
and through any sub-regional work that we do. We have not—
Q268 Mr O'Brien: How does a tenant become
involved with regional housing strategy?
Mr Gregory: We have sent the housing
strategy through the partner organisations and have asked them
to use their own consultation mechanisms to make comments. So
we distributed the strategy to everybody we could think of, and
we received any comments back. Those comments came back both from
individuals and from organisations. I think we do need to think
specifically about how we engage the tenants and residents in
the development of the strategy at a regional level. I would say
that is probably a weakness that we need to pick up.
Q269 Mr Cummings: When you say you "need
to pick up", surely over the course of the last two years
you have given it some serious considerations?
Mr Garbutt: I think there is an
issue about the broad remit of the Board which obviously has focused
on, firstly, within the last year, getting a housing strategy
into shape and building consensus around that and then allocating
funds. It has not dealt in anything like the same way—indeed,
I do not think we would see this as its remit at the moment—with
housing management issues.
Q270 Mr Cummings: I am sorry for interrupting,
but are you saying that you are developing a housing strategy
without the participation or the cooperation of the various tenant
boards?
Mr Garbutt: No, I do not think
we are saying that.
Q271 Mr Cummings: Can you tell me what
input the tenants have had into your housing strategy to date?
Mr Garbutt: I think what we are
saying is that because the housing strategy is itself built on
local strategies that is where we would expect much of the participation
to be.
Q272 Mr Cummings: You expect it. Do you
know whether it is happening? Are you encouraging it?
Mr Garbutt: It is a very good
question, and I do not have a comprehensive answer. If I did I
would give it to you. I think we need to take that away and do
more work on it. It is a good question.
Q273 Mr O'Brien: Can I ask why there
is no representative from tenants' associations or organisations
on the Board?
Mr Garbutt: We have taken the
view in this first year that the process was essentially, if you
like, almost an official process of trying to get together all
of the information we have about housing markets in the region,
all of the sub-regional strategies, the local authority strategies,
and to try to put that together.
Q274 Mr O'Brien: Does it include tenants?
Mr Garbutt: The Board itself does
not include tenants; it does not include councillors at the moment,
which is another key question.
Q275 Mr O'Brien: How can you gather this
information and input without the people at the front end?
Mr Gregory: The Regional Housing
Board asks the Regional Housing Partnership to write the strategy
on its behalf, and the Regional Housing Partnership has a number
of networks. Those networks would include tenants through the
partner organisations. I think what is reasonable for us to consider
is whether we ask the network of tenants federations across the
region whether they would wish to form a network within the partnership.
They would be consulted as interested organisations as far as
the strategy is concerned, although I cannot recall a particular
input as far as the strategy is concerned, but I think we should
consider whether they would wish to group themselves into a regional
network. I have sounded out my own tenants' federation about forming
a regional network, and I got quite a cool response. They felt
their interest was better dealt with at a district level rather
than at a regional level; but I think it is a fair question that
I will go back and ask the tenants' federations whether they would
wish to form a network themselves.
Q276 Mr O'Brien: If we take this suggestion,
and one has to ask the question why this has not been part of
the strategy from the very start, that the tenants' participation
and the tenants' view should be sought, if you are now going to
widen this and start a network and obviously offer more opportunities
for people, does that mean to say you need more resources?
Mr Gregory: No. We may well identify
through the development of the strategy the need for more resources
at a regional level, yes. In terms of consultation, I do not think
we would need any more resources.
Mr Garbutt: It would be reasonable
to ask whether tenants' organisations would need more resources
to carry out that function, because it would require some development,
I think, in the notion of working at a regional scale, which they
do not apparently do. With respect, I think it is a very good
question, and it is one we will take away and think about, but
I do not think that would necessarily have been the right thing
to do in this first year.
Q277 Mr O'Brien: Why not?
Mr Garbutt: Because we have been
carrying out an analytical process.
Q278 Mr O'Brien: Why do you say you do
not think it would reasonable for tenants to be included from
the start?
Mr Garbutt: I think at this stage
we have been carrying out an analytical process looking at the
local strategies.
Q279 Mr O'Brien: There is nothing more
local than tenants, is there?
Mr Garbutt: No, indeed, but, as
I said earlier, my presumption would be that tenants are involved
in local strategies. If they are not, and again your colleague
asked a good question, do we have a role in ensuring that tenants
are involved in the development of local housing strategy? It
is a good question.
Chairman: We have to move on now.
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