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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 46-v

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER:

HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE

 

DECENT HOMES

 

Monday 2 February 2004

MR P DIXON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 565-582

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee

on Monday 2 February 2004

Members present

Andrew Bennett, in the Chair

Sir Paul Beresford

Mr Clive Betts

Chris Mole

Mr Bill O'Brien

Christine Russell

________________

Witness: Mr Peter Dixon, Chairman, Housing Corporation, examined.

Q565 Chairman: May I welcome you to the Committee? For this first 15 minutes we are dealing with the inquiry into Decent Homes. May I ask you to identify yourself for the record, please?

Mr Dixon: I am Peter Dixon. I am the Chairman of the Housing Corporation.

Q566 Chairman: You know why we asked you to come. The Select Committee has the powers to send for people and papers, but we do not have the powers to compel organisations to submit evidence. I am sure you are aware that we were very disappointed that no evidence came in from the Housing Corporation for our Decent Homes inquiry. The only explanation we received was that you totally agreed with the department in their evidence. I wonder whether you want to say anything more to the Committee at this stage.

Mr Dixon: It was not a question of totally agreeing with them, so much as having said all we wanted to say, in terms of giving information, in our submission through ODPM. We are obviously very happy to give any further information that the Committee feels would be helpful. Our view was that we would potentially be wasting your time by doing the same thing twice. We were supplying the evidence that they required, which we believe we have done. Obviously we can supply that evidence separately to you if that is what you would wish. It was in an effort to avoid wasting the Committee's time.

Q567 Chairman: We would have much preferred to have had that evidence twice, even if it were the same, but I would have thought there would have been quite significant differences between the Housing Corporation and the department, in the sense that you are there to champion housing, are you not, rather than merely to be part of the Whitehall machine?

Mr Dixon: We are there to do a variety of things, of which championing housing is certainly one. Equally, ensuring that housing associations play their part in meeting the Decent Homes standards is extremely important and that is another of our functions. The evidence we had given was with respect to the progress which was being made, the issues we were coming up against and basically saying that we believed that housing associations would meet the target by 2010. I am very happy to share that further with the Committee, if that would be helpful.

Q568 Chairman: That would be very helpful; it is quite important for us to be able to distinguish your view from what is quite clearly the view of the department. Do you see any significant differences between your view and the department's view?

Mr Dixon: Not that I am aware of at this stage. I think everybody regards it as a challenging requirement, but we believe that RSLs are going to play their part in meeting it and that significant progress is continuing to be made. We have no quarrel with ODPM on the progress which is being made.

Q569 Chairman: Given the funding round which is about to start, is it not very important that someone very firmly puts in a bid for extra resources for the housing sector, particularly if they are to meet the Decent Homes target?

Mr Dixon: I am not absolutely certain that is the case, with respect. Most of the improvement to housing association stock is being made by RSLs without resort to grant funding. It is only in cases of considerable difficulty that we are actually using HSG in order to meet the standard. It is correct that there is never enough HSG to go round. We want to make the most use of it we possibly can and while the Decent Homes standard is one call on our funding, it is a relatively minor one and I would hope it stays a relatively minor one. I hope that associations find other ways of meeting the standard.

Q570 Mr O'Brien: In the past the Members of Parliament from the North of England have had to criticise the way that funding has been transferred from the North to the South for housing. Can you assure me that practice has ceased and that the North of England will receive the same consideration in the Decent Homes programme as the authorities in the South of England?

Mr Dixon: I can certainly give you the assurance that we shall be even-handed across the country. In terms of the transfer of resources, that is a set of decisions which is sometimes outside our hands, but we will deal with all associations throughout the country in an even-handed way. I am aware that there are some associations in the North particularly who think that they will find it challenging to meet the Decent Homes standard. We are in discussion with a number of them at the present time.

Q571 Mr O'Brien: Who will be involved in the discussions? Between you and whom?

Mr Dixon: In the first instance those discussions will be between us and the appropriate housing association. It will be a one-to-one discussion. We shall form a view as to their plans and their progress towards meeting the Decent Homes standard. We shall be looking at their whole asset management strategy, because that is a part of this process. We feel that there are several associations which have not yet demonstrated to us that they are going to be able to solve this. I believe that Dr Perry mentioned that in his evidence, when he appeared in front of the Committee. We are working on that with those associations and I think we will come up with solutions.

Q572 Mr O'Brien: To whom will you report after the consultations? To whom will the Housing Corporation report?

Mr Dixon: Initially the housing association will report to us as the regulator, because meeting the Decent Homes standard is a part of our regulatory function.

Q573 Mr O'Brien: You said you were going to have negotiations with housing associations. To whom will you report after that?

Mr Dixon: We will report ultimately to ODPM on that.

Q574 Mr Betts: The evidence you have just given us is that you are going to sit down with these associations and a figure around 50 was mentioned at some point during our evidence sessions as the ones which might have a real problem in meeting the targets by 2010. But we are half way through the period, are we not, when work should have been going on to hit the targets, yet you are indicating that you are only sitting down and looking at solutions, that you have not actually got a plan to hand for each one of these associations?

Mr Dixon: What we are saying is that the plans which have been produced by a minority of associations do not convince us as yet. It does not means we have not done anything; it means the progress which has been made in some of those associations is not fast enough for us yet.

Q575 Mr Betts: You have set them targets but they are not hitting them yet.

Mr Dixon: Shall we say that they have submitted plans which we are not convinced by? We cannot instruct these organisations; they are independent. We can influence them, if necessary we can invest in them, but we cannot actually give them instructions. A dialogue is involved, but we have not been sitting on our hands waiting for something to happen, we have been in conversation with them.

Q576 Mr Betts: What if they continue to fail to convince you?

Mr Dixon: If they continue to fail to convince us, at some point we will use our supervisory powers. We have the powers to appoint board members and we will use those powers if we feel they are necessary. That is very much a later resort - not necessarily a last resort - rather than the thing to do immediately.

Q577 Mr Betts: Later is going to get very late, is it not, unless something happens soon?

Mr Dixon: We have six years to go.

Q578 Mr Betts: Do you think that in everyone of those cases you can get them to the target of 2010 by using these powers? Is it possible?

Mr Dixon: I have no reason to suppose that we are not going to get all housing associations to that standard by 2010.

Q579 Mr Betts: What about possible future stock transfers? If a stock transfer happens now, or in the next couple of years, then the time period is going to be very small to get what could be some very poor stock up to that standard. Is that going to be a problem?

Mr Dixon: That could challenge the process. You are absolutely right. If somebody comes in at the end of the day, having failed to get an ALMO off the ground, having failed to get investment within the local authority and then decides at the last minute that the only solution is to transfer their stock, there are likely to be some challenges. You may have seen in the report we produced last year that there was actually a rise in the number of homes which did not meet the standard. The reason for that rise was because of the number of large LSVTs which had transferred out of local authorities, come into the RSL sector and they had not yet started on meeting the Decent Homes programme. That could present a challenge to the process: I have every reason to suppose we will meet it. In that context, the only other thing I would say is that in every LSVT I am aware of, every stock transfer I have seen, the repair promises which have been made to tenants have been met. I have not seen one where that has not been the case.

Q580 Christine Russell: May I ask you about communication within the Housing Corporation? Am I right in assuming that really you have two arms: the regulatory one and the funding one? Is that right?

Mr Dixon: We have two functions and to some extent they are separate arms, but they link together quite closely when necessary.

Q581 Christine Russell: The question I am going to put to you is: just how well do they communicate? The reason I am asking you is that in my constituency for at least the last five years since the stock was transferred from the local authority to a housing trust, there has been a desire and a scheme worked up to demolish the properties in the poorest condition. Right up to the day after the planning permission for the redevelopment scheme was agreed, the housing trust was being given the green light of £2.5 million of Housing Corporation money. You can imagine how that community was devastated to get the news, the week before Christmas, that your other arm had said they could not have the £2.5 million, essentially pulling the rug. How can that happen? Right up to that letter, officers of the Housing Corporation had been telling the local authority, local councillors, me as the MP, the housing trust that they would get this money. How can something like that happen?

Mr Dixon: I am aware that there is an association in your constituency which has recently been placed under supervision. My understanding is that there has been a variety of concerns there about the governance and particularly about the financing of that organisation's plans. I am not aware that there was any disconnection between the two sets of decisions. I am very happy to go into the detail with you at some stage.

Q582 Chairman: It would be very useful if you could go into that and let us have a note.

Mr Dixon: Certainly.

Chairman: We are very pleased that you have made it clear that you will let us have the documents you submitted to the department so we can see how their evidence and your evidence is different. On that note, may I thank you very much for coming this afternoon. The main Committee is now adjourned but the Sub-Committee will start straightaway.