Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 225)
MONDAY 22 JANUARY 2007
MR KARL
TUPLING AND
MR PETER
MORTON
Q220 Mr Olner:
Excuse me, there is in some areas.
Mr Tupling: There is hardly an
estate where someone has not exercised the right to buy. The point
I am making is that we need a system which is flexible enough
to be able to respond to the needs of the community regardless
of tenure, and a system for charging for that service in a fair
and equitable way. This may give some way towards that flexibility
for tenants, but we need to broaden that out so that for leaseholders
and owner-occupiers there is a way of buying in and being able
to be confident that the services they are buying are good value
for money.
Q221 Mr Betts:
From the evidence you gave about building new homes, you came
to the view that the ALMO should be involved in that process,
we should not just leave it to RSLs and it should not be the council
that does the building, in this case it should be ALMOs. Can you
say briefly why you came to that view? It could have been the
local authority that built instead. Are you getting proper support,
encouragement and assistance from DCLG officials, because there
are a lot of technical barriers that you have listed which need
getting out of the way to be successful?
Mr Tupling: I think it is right
to say, currently, councils could build, although the subsidy
system would work against that. Genuinely, the City Council is
interested in a model that would, perhaps through ALMOs building,
get more out of the existing system. We have looked to ALMOs being
able to access social housing grants, for example, and perhaps
if you look at the efficiencies that ALMOs are able to deliver
through housing management over a 30-year period, they are able
to derive long-term savings and long-term efficiencies through
ALMOs building. So, yes, we are very interested in testing that
out, but at the moment the system would work against councils
building houses.
Q222 Chair: Have
you explored the leasehold systems that some of the London boroughs
seem to be organising, where they lease the homes back and forth
between the council and the ALMO, so the ALMO then does have a
capital asset? Would that work in somewhere like Sheffield or
is it only going to work somewhere with very high land values?
Mr Tupling: I think it is probably
worth pointing out that a number of models vary in what happens
to the existing stock and this is a look at how we can increase
the numbers of affordable homes in the city. So, no, we have not
looked at that, but what we have looked at is leasing properties
in from the private sector, but this is a very different model
indeed.
Mr Morton: Chair, could I come
in on the last point about assistance from officials and the Housing
Corporation. Tomorrow, we have got a workshop with the Housing
Corporation and civil servants to explore the obstacles to ALMO
investment—and some of those are set out in our evidence—but
more to the point, to work out some solutions. So we are working
with the Government and the Housing Corporation and there may
be an opportunity after that workshop to give you further evidence
outcomes from that meeting.
Chair: That would be very helpful.
Q223 Emily Thornberry:
I really wanted to ask a question about—I suppose it is
coming back to the fundamentals—ALMOs being arm's length
management organisations have property that is owned by the local
authority, so if you are going to be building homes against your
revenue stream, borrowing against your revenue stream, who is
going to own that? Will it be the local authority or will it be
you? Does that not change your role completely?
Mr Morton: Yes, our ambition is
for Sheffield Homes to own the new-build properties and that would
change the status of the homes; they would be outside the housing
revenue count, the present right-to-buy arrangements would not
apply, home buy might apply, so the issue around recycling receipts
would be different. If we did sell the property, we would be able
to get the investment back and the ALMO would start to build its
own asset base, albeit very modest, and we would be outside the
subsidy system as well.
Q224 Chair: Could
I finish by asking, in your evidence you say you are losing 3,000
homes a year, I think it was, to housing associations. Why are
tenants transferring to housing associations?
Mr Tupling: Perhaps I could clarify.
It is not a question of losing homes. At the outset, tenants across
Sheffield exercised choice in terms of pursuing an ALMO route
or a stock transfer and 7,500 tenants opted for a stock transfer.
That is against around 550 tenants who, year on year, currently
are exercising the right to buy.
Q225 Chair: Thank
you very much for clarifying that. Thank you for your evidence
and if we have got any further questions we might write to you
for more clarification.
Mr Tupling: Thank you.
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