Examination of Witnesses (Questions 436-439)
28 JANUARY 2004
MR JIM
COULTER, MR
DANNY FRIEDMAN
AND MR
NIGEL MINTO
Q436 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the
Committee's fourth session on Decent Homes and ask you to identify
yourselves for the record, please.
Mr Coulter: I am Jim Coulter,
Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation.
Mr Friedman: Good morning. I am
Danny Friedman, Policy Director at the National Housing Federation.
Mr Minto: I am Nigel Minto. I
am the Head of Projects at the National Housing Federation.
Q437 Chairman: Thank you very much. Do
you want to say anything by way of introduction or are you happy
for us to go straight to questions?
Mr Coulter: If I could just make
some very brief remarks, Chairman.
Q438 Chairman: Yes. I would not have
given you the chance if I was not intending to let you do so!
Mr Coulter: Thank you very much.
We are very glad to be here. We obviously welcome both the Committee's
inquiry and the establishment of the Decent Homes Standard, but
we want to stress that of course it is a minimum standard and
what Housing Associations want to do is to go beyond it. The data
that we have shows that the overwhelming bulk of Housing Association
stock, over 1.4 million, currently meets the Standard, there are
about 350,000 or so homes which do not and there are some challenges
for different types of organisations in that. We calculate that
on present resources the bulk will meet the Standard, but there
is a residual core which will not and of course there are some
problems yet to be resolved which may have an impact on that.
So we want to make sure certainly by the Spending Review this
summer that there is enough money in the system, whether that
is new borrowing by Housing Associations on their own business
plans or additional public resources through the housing corporation's
programme.
Q439 Chairman: Are you hinting that the
crucial thing is that you can knock houses down and that will
get you closer to the Standard or you can improve houses to get
them to the Standard?
Mr Coulter: Indeed. The business
plans are still in progress, they are not publicly available and
so it is difficult for us to make estimates about what the impact
of that will be at this stage at least.
| 
