Memorandum from Bolton at Home Arms Length
Management Organisation (BDH 43)
KEY POINTS:
— Decent Homes programme was essential
but situation should not be let slide again so we would have to
repeat it in 10 years.
— Reliable and sufficient future resources
are required to maintain stock once it has reached decency standard.
— Minimum decency standards have to embrace
the wider socio-economic and environmental outcomes that are essential
to pace shaping.
— As well as delivering improved dwellings,
the programme also had other outcomes.
— Customers want and expect decent communities
rather than just decent homes. This should cause a re-think as
to what is considered a "core" service.
— Housing organisations need to evolve
and be given more freedoms without them losing accountability.
— The actual state of the stock has to
be the basis for the funding requirement for decency regardless
of standard.
— Bolton at Home and others can help those
organisations who are struggling to hit deadlines for completion
of programmes.
— The difficulty in hitting decency standards
targets in the private sector is due in part to the low level
of public investment and in part to the financial downturn. Solutions
involve a far greater level of investment and channelling this
through a tool-box of interventions that are customised to individual
needs, capacity and aspiration.
— The shift away from the Housing Revenue
Account (HRA) is timely but the devolved self-financing system
that replaces it needs to be regulated with a light touch by the
Tenants Services Authority (TSA).
— Bolton at Home has a number of good practice
examples that we can share. Some of which are mentioned in Section
8.
1. What lessons can be learned from the Decent
Homes programme?
1.1 The decent homes programme provided
an absolutely essential influx of resources to reverse the under-investment
on public sector stock that had occurred over the previous decades.
So the first lesson to learn is not to repeat the same mistake
of accumulating disrepair on this scale during the next decade.
Without this the value of public sector housing and its wider
reputation would have been hit very hard.
1.2 The biggest challenge we face is to
ensure that, once having used up the one-off financial investment,
there is sufficient future resources to maintain the stock at
the levels that customers and any future investors should expect.
1.3 During the period the demand for Bolton's
public stock rose considerably. Whilst this was impacted by the
general shortage of private sector affordable housing, it is also
due to the fact that our "product" became more attractive
as a result of the decent homes programme. So the lesson learned
is that if you improve the product you improve its marketability.
1.4 That decent homes programmes are well-received
by our customers who are more than willing to experience a degree
of disruption if this means that their homes are being improved.
This is especially noticeable amongst people who have been tenants
for a considerable time. Therefore not surprisingly, we found
that improving people's homes raised their satisfaction levels.
1.5 A greater sense of ownership is engendered
amongst customers and, as the whole estate is involved, there
is opportunity and reason for people to come together as a community.
Here the lesson is that the decent homes programme brought more
than just a physical improvement as it also provided the potential
for community engagement, community cohesion and socio-economic
development.
1.6 The improvements made to public sector
stock shows up the poor condition of a significant number of former
right to buys whose owners where either unwilling or unable to
match the investment made in the public dwellings. Many of these
are in such a bad condition as to stand out more starkly blighting
their housing estates.
1.7 Most important lesson was that customers'
expectations and aspirations for what decent homes should achieve
go far beyond their own home. Their concerns spread to the conditions
of neighbouring properties and to the wider environment. Further
than the physical issues residents relate decent homes to decent
communities. so are as equally concerned about social and economic
aspects of their neighbourhoods. This mirrors what is being said
in the National Conversation and should make us all think again
as to what constitutes "core" services and what should
be covered in the minimum standards.
1.8 Greatest consideration needs to be given
to the actual state of the stock, (derived from a quality stock
condition survey) rather than the pursuit of standards. Whilst
the work put in by the BRE to create notional "national"
standards is helpful, it is not fit for purpose as it cannoy take
into all the different local, sub-regionall and regional differentials
1.9 Finally, on the technical side, one
of the strongest lessons learned was that the state of kitchens
and bathrooms should be included as major elements in deciding
whether or not a dwelling meets the threshold for improvement.
2. Where targeted housing fails to reach
the Decent Homes criteria by 2010, how should the backlog be addressed?
2.1 Bolton at Home reached our public housing
decent homes target by April 2008, some two years ahead of schedule,
so we do not have to address the problem of backlogs.
2.2 Our (and others) positive experience of delivering
the decent homes programme may be used to help those who are struggling
to meet deadlines. Obviously there are circumstances unique to
organisations that prevents them from delivering by the deadline,
but good practice in this area should be largely transferable.
3. Should minimum acceptable standards be
amended to take account of environmental standards, fuel poverty
and the estate?
3.1 The answer to this is an emphatic yes.
The clearest lesson learned from the Decent Homes programme is
that the decline of public sector housing, caused by under-investment
may be checked by improving dwellings up to the presently prescribed
decency standards, but can only be permanently reversed if those
key socio-economic and environmental areas are also addressed
as part of a "decent communities" approach (or as the
government describes it, as their "place-making").
3.2 This is also a lesson learned from past
mistakes where improvement of stock (public or private) had not
taken place in tandem with place shaping. By incorporating these
areas as part of the "core offer" of regeneration, the
Decent Homes programme would be making a profound statement as
to what is considered a minimum necessity and, therefore, worthy
of mainstream funding.
4. Do management organisations—councils,
including via ALMOs, and housing associations—need to change?
Will they have sufficient funds?
4.1 There is no doubt that housing management
organisations will have to change if they have any hope in meeting
the anticipated cost of ensuring that stock is kept within decency
standards. Indeed it is under the present conditions (without
the one-off injection of Decent Homes money) that insufficient
resources were created that caused the disrepair problem in the
first place. Further, if the case for extending the criteria for
what constitutes a decent home is accepted (and add to this the
increase in stock to meet demand), then there will be an even
greater burden of resources to be found in the future.
4.2 Housing management organisations need
to be given more freedoms to operate as a business without losing
accountability or being less open to public scrutiny. This means
being able to release some of the present value held in the stock
to finance continuing and future improvement and maintenance costs.
It may also be a possibility that housing organisations could
grow their businesses in other directions and use any profits
gained to subsidise their housing stock.
4.3 Housing management organisations, obviously,
rely heavily on raising rent income to raise funds for keeping
dwellings up to decency standards. There is however, a limit to
what to we can and should set rent levels at. It would seem inequitable
to raise them dramatically to market rent levels as this would
disadvantage many of our customers on limited incomes. Whilst
some changes and freedoms are needed there should always be some
constraints on rent charges. But by imposing this there has to
be a contingent obligation placed on the public exchequer to provide
some reasonable support to allow organisations to meet their additional
social responsibilities in respect of providing affordable rents.
An obligation not placed upon those private sector organisations
who have the option to charge a market rent.
5. What are the implications for decent housing
standards of the Government's proposal, currently out for consultation,
to move to a more devolved system of housing finance?
5.1 Whilst being supportive of much contained
within the proposals, such as the aim to create self-financing
housing organisations supported by a much lighter regulated environment
that is much more devolved from central control, there are a number
of concerns in relation to maintaining decent homes standards.
5.2 There seems a misapprehension about
what constitutes the core service. We contend that the wider interpretation
of what a decent homes standard should cover means that these
additional elements are core, a point not recognised in the consultation
document.
5.3 Under the present system there are local
authorities who pay surpluses into the HRA and others, such as
Bolton, who receive pooled subsidies. As mostly these subsidies
are used to pay for repairs and maintenance it is imperative that
the government consider a one-off debt settlement for those receiving
subsidy.
5.4 As previously mentioned, the proposal
fails to give sufficient importance to the actual stock condition
and the significant differences is levels of affluence across
the country.
6. How should Decent Homes target for private
sector homes occupied by vulnerable people be taken forward?
6.1 There is a very real challenge in bringing
private sector housing up to decency standard to replicate the
successful way this has been achieved with the public stock. Not
least that, private sector house condition surveys notwithstanding,
our detailed information base is nowhere near as accurate as that
of our own stock. Further, the very nature of being vulnerable
suggests that the potential customer is less able/likely to engage
with the organisations who could help them.
6.2 Behind all this is the perception that
there are insufficient resources made available to meet the demand
should we be able to identify it in as much detail as we have
in the public sector. This is particularly acutely felt in the
North West as we have received a dwindling allocation of public
resources to tackle our growing private sector housing renewal
problems. On top of all this, the recent financial downturn has
made it even more difficult for vulnerable people to afford to
make contributions to their share of costs (either from capital
or borrowing) and the value of any equity share has decreased
in proportion to the drop in house prices.
6.3 The following way forward is suggested:
— Increase not decrease the amount of public
sector investment into housing renewal.
— Encourage greater accuracy of information
on private sector disrepair.
— Extend the minimum standards to include
those advocated earlier for the public sector.
— Develop a tool-box approach that provides
for options not just around the physical works but also on finding
the most suitable financial package for the individual vulnerable
customer (with any support they might need from other agencies).
— Target works, whenever possible, within
wider housing renewal programmes.
— Sooner rather than later the private
rented sector should be brought under the TSA ambit.
7. Are adequate arrangements in place for
the future of regulation of minimum acceptable housing standards?
7.1 There are adequate arrangements in place
as the TSA remit covers all that should be required. The only
comments to make are:
— The "devil may be in the detail"
as to how the TSA balance a lightness of touch with the thoroughness
required for the regulation to mean something.
— The extension of what should constitute
minimum decency standards, as proposed earlier, often shifts into
areas where simple outputs (such as proportion of rent collected)
is of less importance. There is a need to develop more qualitative
measurement tools—possibly through social accounting techniques.
— These are minimum standards and the TSA
needs to encourage housing management organisations to go beyond
this threshold. What form of this encouragement takes needs to
be thought out and discussed.
8. Are there local examples of innovative
best practice with wider post-2010 applicability?
8.1 BH has a number of examples of best
practice these include:
Customer Involvement
— Design and Specification Group—Customers,
councillors, board members, staff and partners meet on a quarterly
basis to review the works specification and design issues.
— Setting up of Neighbourhood Panels and
Neighbourhood Champions has helped inform customers of how the
Capital Improvement Programme is produced and how customers can
influence it. This has now been superseded by the development
of Neighbourhood Management Areas where regeneration activity
is directed through staff working at the local level directly
with customers.
The Partnering process
— Sharing knowledge has resulted in reducing
costs and improving procedures to improve efficiencies. An example
of this has been demonstrated within the In House kitchen and
bathroom teams improving their turnaround time and profitability
after HT Forest had shared their procedures.
— A joint procurement exercise has reduced
material costs.
Shared Liaison Officers
— The liaison function is a key element
of the success of planned improvement work. Regular meetings between
partner companies have resulted in improved liaison, improved
customer satisfaction and greater customer involvement.
Great Estates leading to Transforming Estates
— Great Estates was tackled the environmental
works excluded from decent homes and involved customers making
choices over layouts and influencing budget spend.
Dedicated budgets empowered to customers
— Through customer involvement several
budgets within the Capital Improvement Programme were devolved
to customers eg Elderly Services budget, Neighbourhood Panel budget.
September 2009
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