Memorandum by David Smith, Chief Executive,
Atlantic Housing Group (DEC 43)
The link between Decent Homes Target and other
parts of the Government's Sustainable Communities Agenda
In focusing on the need to achieve this dwelling-based
standard there is a real risk that many Local Authorities will
take the achievement of the Decent Homes Standard as a stand-alone
goal and will not see it in the light of a more sophisticated
approach to demand, supply and asset management.
Local Councils and RSL's are correctly actively
encouraged to have proper asset management strategies and to ask
some very hard questions about their stock including:
— What will the structure of the population
be like in five, 10 or 15 years time and how will this affect
demand for the housing that we provide?
— Bearing in mind the critical importance
of location to all housing decisions, how desirable are the housing
location of our properties and areas of choice, and how might
this alter in five, 10 or 15 years time?
— Is the tenure mix in our stock supportive
of other locally important strategies such as education and social
cohesion and do our lettings and tenure diversification strategies
support other sustainable community issues?
My experience to date is that many of these
questions are simply not being asked and this is reinforced by
the focus of the standard purely on the dwelling.
It is relatively easy to carry out a house condition
survey and to cost how long it will take to bring things to a
certain standard and to put programmes in place. It is the ease
of requirement simply to achieve the Decent Homes Standard rather
than integrate it into a much wider a more effective community
development strategy that will be its downfall in certain areas.
This is not to say that the achievement of higher
standards in the Council housing sector is not something we should
be pressing for, indeed 2010 seems a long way off for many tenants.
If we are not going to repeat the mistakes of
the past then a much more integrated approach must be taken. As
a housing manager in London in the 1980s I witnessed too many
examples of physical investment not achieving the gains in quality
of life that we should expect from major programmes. What this
does, of course, is to bring into disrepute many aspects of public
sector investment.
It may well be, of course that the options appraisals
currently being carried out by Local Councils will deal in a more
sophisticated with those issues listed above than has traditionally
been the case in the past.
Those Local Councils however that purely focus
on their existing stock where it is now with the current tenure
distribution and see the Decent Home Standard purely as a way
of improving what is there now will, I suspect, pay a heavy price
in the future as their housing becomes less and less of the tenure
of choice.
THE DEFINITION
OF DECENT
HOMES
Whilst it is reasonable that the statutory minimum
standard for housing should be included in the definition of decency
it has to be accepted that this will create problems for housing
associations. The body of expertise on the interpretation of fitness
lies in Local Authorities within their Environmental Health Departments.
Whilst there are a fair number of Environmental Health Officers
working in LSVT associations because of the transfer arrangements,
this is not always the case in respect of associations generally.
Therefore within RSL's there will always be some problems of interpretation.
These problems will be exacerbated with the
introduction of the housing, health and safety rating system and
some considerable thought will have to be given to the training
of staff in RSL's if the figures from this growing sector are
to be consistent and reliable.
The fact that the housing association sector
houses a very significant number of vulnerable people, whether
they be people with physical disabilities, learning difficulties,
people who are perhaps frail elderly or possibly suffering from
dementia, will mean that the new health and safety rating system
will always be something of a moveable feast in supported housing.
OLD AND
IN POOR
CONDITION WITH
REASONABLY MODERN
FACILITIES
Whilst it is helpful to have standard lifetimes
for components, particularly when it comes to planning for the
worst case scenarios, in the real world there is a distribution
of component life.
Nothing irritates tenants more than seeing serviceable
components replaced because they have reached a certain life.
This would be particularly the case in respect
of the 20 year-old kitchen and the 30 year-old bathroom, although
it is highly unlikely certainly that modern flat-pack kitchens
will always last more than 20 years, some of the higher quality
built-in components may well.
Once again we come back to the issue of supported
housing, particularly kitchens, bathrooms and other space issues
in respect of, for example, sheltered housing.
Eastleigh Housing Association which is a major
part of the Atlantic Housing Group has approximately 750 bungalows
built in the 1950s and 1960s and just over 350 of them are very
small one-bedroom bungalows.
The kitchens and bathrooms are tiny and there
is very little space available for the sort of adaptations which
are necessary as our tenants grow older and become frailer.
These bungalows will fail the Decent Homes Standard
and have been included in our Asset Management Strategy for replacement.
They are on existing estates and therefore offer a great potential
for redevelopment at higher and more flexible densities and a
slightly different view on tenure.
In many cases however the issues that makes
the home most difficult to live in are not the things associated
with the Decent Homes Standard itself but actually the environment,
particularly the very large gardens that many of the bungalows
have.
ADEQUATE NOISE
INSULATION
The issue of noise insulation in flats is something
that housing associations are dealing with all the time in part,
in many cases in respect of flats that were fully compliant with
all the necessary regulations at the time of construction/rehabilitation.
Individual response to noise of course varies
and the issue of residents reporting noise is often a very personal
issue.
Properties failing the Decent Homes Standard
as a result of rises in external noise can be a very significant
issue for associations and a further example of where external
matters are just as important as internal ones in assessing the
quality of housing.
It is not lost on many of our tenants, however,
that some of the country's most expensive properties are in some
extremely noisy streets and the issue of noise will have to be
carefully reviewed.
THE ROLE
OF STOCK
TRANSFER
I have worked within a Large Scale Voluntary
Transfer organisation for seven years now and I am convinced of
the huge potential there is for Transfers to deliver and to make
an even greater contribution to achieving the Decent Homes Standard.
The advantages of stock transfer are well known
and recent research on the effects of transfer has been very positive.
In respect of the work of this particular committee, voluntary
transfer is likely to deliver a much more satisfactory solution
to stock condition for the following reasons:
1. LSVT's particularly take on a range of
properties and therefore have a vested interest in a holistic
approach. Simply renovating dwellings, paying no attention to
the environment is not an option for an organisation that owns,
for example in our case, 80% of all social housing in Eastleigh.
2. The very strong tenant presence that
there is in LSVT's, on the board, within formal consultative structures
and increasingly as part of more sophisticated consultation and
participation arrangements means that the primary focus of the
LSVT, ie the achievement of a significant improvement in living
conditions over a short period is never lost.
3. Freed from the internal culture of Local
Authorities, LSVT's are able to take a single focus approach to
house improvement and have done so.
4. The holistic approach taken by LSVT's
means that they are much more likely to have an overall view about
asset management and the long term future of the stock, its environment
and the communities it houses than a simple view about the need
to achieve a physical standard by a given date.
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