Memorandum by the Confederation of Co-operative
Housing
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Confederation of Co-operative Housing
(CCH) is the national representative body for housing co-operatives
and other forms of community controlled housing. It is a voluntary
organisation, made up of tenant representatives from housing co-ops
and other supporter organisations. Since 1994, the CCH has promoted
community controlled housing as a means of establishing sustainable
communities, and has worked in partnership with Government and
other bodies to develop practical methods to implement community
controlled housing. The CCH's work has most notably included:
— ongoing support and advice for the
housing co-operative movement in England and Wales
— pioneering the Community Gateway
model as a means of establishing tenant and community membership
based large scale housing organisations, and work in partnership
with Co-operatives UK and the Chartered Institute of Housing to
develop a Community Gateway framework
— investigation into Community Land
Trusts as vehicles to enable community control over wider housing
and other neighbourhood based issues
— working with the Housing Corporation
to develop the Taking Control in your Community best practice
advice and support for housing association tenants and officers
on community initiatives
1.2 The CCH welcomes the opportunity to
make a submission to the Communities & Local Government Committee
Inquiry into the supply of rented housing. We are pleased to have
seen the steady progress made on various housing agendas since
1997, particularly the drive to raise the level of tenant involvement
in decision-making. However, we also consider that considerable
challenges remain or have developed:
— despite Government subsidy, there
is still a growing shortage of homes available to meet demand,
resulting in escalating house prices
— the traditional UK home ownership
model is becoming increasingly harder to sustain. Increasing house
prices means that public subsidy is necessary to make homeownership
accessible to many first-time buyers, and many low income homeowners
lack the resources with which to maintain their homes. As well
as this, an increasing social and wealth gap between homeowners
and the rest of society has developed.
— increasingly only able to cater for
the most vulnerable in our society, social housing gradually retreats
into a bunker of permanent state dependency, seen as the housing
of last resort. Its only method of survival is merging into larger
organisations where services are pared back, where accountability
to tenants and communities becomes more difficult, and where far
too often, staff are seen as active decision-makers, and tenants
passive recipients
— these problems collectively mean
that it is becoming harder to utilise what should be the most
significant community asset (ie. land and housing) to generate
community fabric
1.3 Below we comment on the specific issues
highlighted in terms in the Inquiry's terms of reference.
2. THE LEVEL
OF PUBLIC
FUNDING REQUIRED
TO MEET
SOCIAL HOUSING
NEEDS
2.1 A Government supported survey has shown
that living in a friendly community is the most important priority
for a majority of the UK population in relation to where they
would like to live,[1]
even more important than living in safe and quiet areas. The research
suggests that established communities will take responsibility
for tackling the issues important to them, and implies that facilitating
community generation should be a guiding principle behind any
initiative if we are to meet popular aspirations.
2.2 The CCH's view is that regardless of
the right balance between funding social housing and other forms
of below market housing, it is necessary to place the generation
of community at the heart of any programmes, and that this may
require short to medium term seed corn funding. Our view, based
on the experiences of co-operative and community controlled housing,
is that generating community activity within housing will lead
in the long term to greater efficiency and value for money, community
self-responsibility, as well as a range of other social and community
benefits. These benefits will lessen public expenditure in the
long term.
3. THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF DIFFERENT
SOCIAL HOUSING
MODELS—LOCAL
AUTHORITIES AND
HOUSING ASSOCIATIONS
3.1 The National Housing Federation and
the National Consumer Council have recently published the report
from an independent Tenant Involvement Commission.[2]
Chaired by Ed Mayo from the National Consumer Council, the Tenant
Involvement Commission was charged with exploring how housing
associations can meet their tenants' aspirations, and how to increase
accountability in the housing association sector.
3.2 The report concludes that, whilst some
housing associations are engaging well with their tenants, they
are often seen as paternalistic by tenants, and calls for a renewed
"relationship between landlord and tenant based on customer
service, mutuality and business success".
3.3 Drawing on the findings from a seminar
held in Leeds where housing association tenants who had previously
not been involved in their associations spoke of a get what you
are given culture, the report not surprisingly identifies that
tenants want housing associations to get basic services right,
whilst at the same time indicating that "community is important
to many tenants". It highlights that "tenants are interested
in becoming involved" but needed to see how getting involved
matters and can make a difference.
3.4 Launching the report at the National
Housing Federation conference in September, Ed Mayo said "the
headline message is that housing associations are perhaps not
yet as good as they think they are. The message from tenants is
stark: you must put your own house in order and deliver better
services, more choice, and ensure that tenants have a greater
say over their homes and neighbourhoods."
3.5 The Tenant Involvement Commission report
is about housing associations, but surveys carried out in 2003-04
showed that 53% of local authority tenants (including ALMOs) were
unhappy with their opportunities to participate in decision-making
(as opposed to 41% in the housing association sector). Whilst
both of these statistics demonstrate the need for fundamental
cultural change, they would appear to suggest that there is an
even greater need for change in the local authority housing sector.
3.6 These problems may not be surprising
given that usually local authority housing departments, ALMOs
and the housing association sector are led by people who are not
required to have skills or knowledge of tenant and community empowerment.
This is a problem that particularly needs to be addressed.
3.7 Community generation needs to be placed
at the heart of a process of cultural change in the way that social
housing homes are provided in the UK. Social housing providers
should be seen as community facilitators. Their role should be
to generate, guide and support communities in making decisions
about their neighbourhoods, where the provider only takes decisions
if adequate community capacity does not yet exist, or where the
community actively delegates decision-making.
3.8 Experience has shown that the greatest
recent progress in tenant and community accountability have been
made as a consequence of the requirement to hold stock transfer
tenant ballots, which have required tenant engagement on an unprecedented
level. It may be that requiring social housing providers to hold
ballots amongst their tenants on key issues, particularly including
housing association merger proposals, would force the pace of
the cultural change that is necessary.
4. THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF DIFFERENT
SOCIAL HOUSING
MODELS—COMMUNITY
GATEWAY
4.1 The Community Gateway model, pioneered
by the co-operative movement through the CCH, was highlighted
as a model of best practice by the Minister for Communities at
this year's launch of the housing stock transfer programme.
4.2 The key aspects that have helped Community
Gateway to transform tenant hostility towards the "traditional"
housing association approach, and has enabled community partnership
between tenants, residents, Council officers and members, and
other stakeholders have been:
— the tenant democracy inherent in
tenant majority membership—whereby tenant engagement, previously
considered a minor add-on becomes essential and legally based
— the commitment to enabling communities
to get involved in decision-making at a local level
— the objectivity and clarity of the
Community Gateway principles, built into the rules and structure
of the organisation
— the reputation that Community Gateway
is gradually building up in the tenant movement
4.3 Community Gateway has been pioneered
through the Preston Community Gateway, and next year will see
the second Community Gateway set up in Watford, where tenants
recently voted in favour of transfer. Tenants ballots are also
due to be held in Tamworth, Braintree, Brighton and Lewisham on
Community Gateway transfers, and in Welsh local authorities for
Community Mutual transfers—the equivalent of Community Gateway
in Wales.
4.4 In a paper[3]
published in 2004, Jeff Zitron, a leading consultant in the social
housing sector, argued that all Council housing should be transferred
to tenant membership based Community Gateway Associations. His
argument was that the choice inherent to the stock transfer process
was artificial given the imbalance of resources available to transfer
and local authority retention, and that the real choice that should
be available to tenants should be about what type of organisation
local authority homes should transfer to.
4.5 Given that:
— the Government's stock transfer programme
has largely been successful with a majority of stock transfer
ballots resulting in transfer, and with additional private resources
that have been made available to social housing through stock
transfer
— even where tenants have voted against
transfer, this has largely been due to misinformation campaigns
by those opposed to transfer
— stock transfer housing associations
have out-performed existing housing associations and local authorities
— the Community Gateway model has now
introduced the concept of tenant ownership, membership and democracy
to the housing association sector
— Community Gateway is beginning to
develop significant cultural change in the provision of social
housing (both in the Community Gateways that are being established,
and also in the wider social housing world—where, for example,
it provided some of the impetus for the National Housing Federation
to establish its Tenant Involvement Commission)
there may be merit in Zitron's argument that
all local authority housing should be transferred to Community
Gateway Associations.
4.6 The CCH would urge the Government with
the CCH and others to review the progress and potential use of
the Community Gateway model.
5. THE EFFECTIVENESS
OF DIFFERENT
SOCIAL HOUSING
MODELS—HOUSING
CO-OPERATIVES
5.1 For many years, the housing co-operatives
and other forms of community controlled housing the CCH represents
have played an important role in generating community to provide
its own self-help approach to provide good quality and cost effective
services. Research that concluded in 1995 that community controlled
housing is amongst the most effective form of social housing has
been confirmed in all research carried out since then.[4]
5.2 However, with very little public attention
paid to the housing co-op sector for many years, it is in need
of a review and refreshment process that is beyond the voluntary
means available to the CCH. In particular, at present, the co-operative
housing sector's assets of approximately £250 million are
difficult to use because they are held across a large number of
small, independent co-ops. In the light of the Barker review,
discussions have started to take place amongst housing co-ops
about how these assets could be rationalised, but this debate
is limited by the lack of resources in our sector to move forward
what would be a complex process.
5.3 Nonetheless, together with other new
community membership housing organisations, a rationalisation
of the housing co-op sector could offer potential to form large
scale self-financing community based regional housing organisations,
with democratic community values at their core. The CCH has proposed
that the Housing Corporation should fund a programme to explore
how the housing co-operative movement can meet the challenges
posed by the Barker review.
5.4 Initial discussions have also taken
place about establishing a Co-operative Movement Real Estate Investment
Trust to utilise the significant co-operative movement asset base,
alongside the housing co-operative asset base, to ethically deliver
a range of affordable and other housing initiatives. Again, this
is a complex proposal that would take significant resources to
forward, although some of these resources would be available from
the co-operative movement itself.
5.5 Other forms of co-operative and community
controlled housing also need some attention. In particular, the
recent Government White Paper on Local Government highlighted
the important role that tenant management could play (again all
the available research has pointed to the success of tenant management).
Dialogue has started with the Housing Corporation on updating
arrangements for establishing tenant management organisations.
A particular noticeable problem has been the lack of funding and
framework to establish tenant management organisations in the
housing association sector, and the CCH and other bodies have
always considered that there is a need to extend the formal Right
to Manage to assured housing association tenants.
5.6 There is also a need to consider how
to remove the obstacle that VAT liabilities place on establishing
community ownership and management organisations and the development
of neighbourhood based approaches. The loss of 17.5% expenditure
is a disincentive for any organisation to consider how to encourage
devolution of management or ownership to community organisations.
6. THE RELATIVE
FUNDING PRIORITY
BEING GIVEN
TO SOCIAL
RENTED HOUSING
AS OPPOSED
TO SHARED
OWNERSHIP & OTHER
FORMS OF
BELOW MARKET
HOUSING
6.1 The CCH is concerned that, particularly
with growing demand for housing and demographic changes, public
subsidy for individual home ownership may prove unsustainable
in the long term unless:
— there are community based means for
public subsidy for home ownership to be recycled for future generations,
and not simply lost through public subsidy to individual asset
building
— public subsidy for home ownership
is allied to models that will generate community activity, community
ownership and long term community responsibility for the future
of neighbourhoods
6.2 The CCH has proposed a gradual redefinition
of housing provision in this country, where a community housing
option becomes available as an option in a continuum that spans
between community based owner occupation (ie not simply based
on individual asset ownership) through to what is now identified
as social housing, where those who contribute financially receive
an asset in relation to their contributions and where public support
is provided as needed. This option needs to become an attractive
sector of choice firstly through it being a cheaper alternative
to traditional homeownership and secondly through it being based
on community ownership, community control and community membership,
responding to popular aspirations to live in friendly communities.
6.3 Community Land Trusts may be one means
of establishing this continuum. Community Land Trusts are community
ownership organisations that can carry out a wide range of housing
and other functions. They could:
— ensure affordable housing provision
becomes relevant to all sections of the community
— unfetter community vision and imagination
to provide its own self-help solutions and enable affordable housing
to progressively break free from its state dependency
— become attractive to ordinary people
so that they gift, bequeath or sell at below market levels land
or assets to Community Land Trusts
— be a means of utilising the most
substantial neighbourhood community asset (ie. its housing) for
community benefit
6.4 But this bold vision will only be achievable
if Community Land Trusts are clearly accountable to local communities,
community owned and set up with community memberships to act as
their stewards.
6.5 With the Community Land Trust model
currently being new and complex to implement, resources need to
be devoted to the development of practical methods of establishing
Community Land Trusts, including the establishment of a number
of pilot programmes, and the promotion of the model.
6.6 Community Land Trusts also offer a means
of establishing mutual homeownership organisations, whereby local
authority land or other public assets used to subsidise individual
home ownership can be permanently locked in to providing affordable
housing whilst providing members an equity stake.
1 ESRC: British Household Panel Study 2002-quoted
in Regional Futures & Neighbourhood Realities-Professor Richard
Scase & Dr Jonathan Scales-published by the National Housing
Federation 2003. Back
2
What Tenants Want-Report of the Tenant Involvement Commission-2006. Back
3
Transfer of Affections-Jeff Zitron-Tribal HCH-2004-published
by the Fabian Society. Back
4
There are many pieces of research that have demonstrated the
success of community controlled housing, including:
Tenants in Control: an evaluation of tenant led housing
management solutions-Price Waterhouse 1995. Commissioned by the
then DOE, this study compared the performance of housing co-ops
and other tenant controlled organisations to local authority and
housing association counterparts. It concluded that housing co-ops
outperformed their local authority and housing association counterparts,
and provided a range of unquantifiable social and community benefits.
Clapham, Kintrea & Kay, 3 university study 1998,
first reported in the May 1998 issue of the Journal for Co-operative
Studies in 1998. Researchers studying the benefits of community
and co-operative ownership in Scotland concluded that "although
a major programme in Scotland, the approach has not been adopted
in England and Wales. The continued success of community ownership
argues strongly for the model to be adopted more widely".
An Evaluation of Tenant Management Organisations in
England-Oxford Brookes University-published by the Office of the
Deputy Prime Minister 2002-concluded that "In most cases,
TMOs were performing better than their own Council and compared
favourably with the top 25% of local authorities. TMOs are a model
of what local people can achieve. They are generally well run
and over half are involved in wider social and development activities
that help to strengthen their community".
Tenant Control & Social Exclusion-Clapham, O'Neill
& Bliss-published by the CCH 2000-concluded that tenant controlled
housing organisations have a favourable impact on Government defined
indices of social exclusion. Back
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