Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
140-145)
MR PETER
MORTON, MR
BOB MCCANN
AND MR
JOHN CLAYTON
9 NOVEMBER 2009
Q140 Mr Turner: Obviously the private
sector is important to housing just as much as the public sector
is. Could you just tell us what you do under section 3 of the
2004 Housing Act to ensure that the private sector is brought
up to a Decent Homes standard? I wonder, from Sandwell, whether
or not you could tell us a little bit more about the funding that
you have identified to bridge some of the gaps that have been
existing within that.
Mr Jones: Certainly in terms of
what we are doing under section 3, we are really starting off
by following CLG guides in terms of stock condition surveys; we
are particularly working with the BRE to develop their stock condition
model so we can identify where we have pockets of non-decency
and vulnerable people. We can target our interventions to those
particular areas. It is becoming more challenging to achieve the
Decent Homes target in the private sector. One of the key things
that has been a blow to us is that PSA7 has certainly declined
in terms of its profile within the local authority and we are
quite disappointed that there is not a section in the national
indicator 158 which relates to private sector housing, whether
that be specifically to vulnerable people or to private sector
housing generally. One of the difficulties we have got in terms
of meeting PSA7 is the link to vulnerability. It does make it
difficult to target interventions because effectively, if we target
activity on area basis we have to either justify not doing works
to people who are not vulnerable or do we do works for those vulnerable
people which do not contribute to our targets under PSA7. Linking
it to vulnerable occupiers specifically does make it difficult
to deliver on the ground. Maybe the way forward would be to have
a target under NI158 but leave it to local authorities locally
in consultation with their regional government office about actually
how they are going to deliver targets on the ground. In terms
of what we have done, it has been a struggle recently. We have
seen capital funding decrease significantly year on year and all
the messages back to us are that it is going to decrease further
with funding moving towards new building costs. Because of that
we have had to work quite creatively with a range of different
partners. Councillor Lines before spoke about Kick Start which
provides equity share loans for owner/occupiers. The scheme is
expanding out regionally now and one of its key aims is to attract
private finance. We have already tendered once but because of
the change in the economic climate that fell through really just
as we were at the point of signing contracts with a private sector
lendor. We think we have a model that will work but we need to
make sure that we keep the momentum up within the local authorities
so at a point in time we can go back to the market and say, "This
really is a product that is worth investing in". Obviously
there the key is to get private financing to the sector to guarantee
sustainability in terms of offering assistance to private sector
occupiers. Without that unfortunately we need to rely on continued
grant funding, whether that is directly through the Housing Investment
programme or by what we have been doing working with funding streams
like the Housing Market Renewal Area, the Working Neighbourhoods
Fund and the PCT to try to make the case that housing interventions
work across a whole broad range of policy objectives, health,
education, employment. We have been quite successful in doing
that but to make it attractive to other partners you always need
that capital leverage that you have got through your own grants
regime.
Q141 Chair: Is most of your private
sector housing owner occupier or private rented?
Mr Jones: It is mostly owner occupier
but we have seen a massive increase in the private rented sector
over the last five years. It has doubled over five years.
Q142 Chair: You said that the target
of going for vulnerable people was difficult, which I can understand.
Might you be delivering the same thing better if you went for
a target on fuel poverty?
Mr Jones: Potentially yes, because
one of the difficulties we have is that people can be fuel poor
but not vulnerable because the definition of vulnerable is very
much about being in receipt of income related benefits whereas
obviously fuel poverty is about spending more than 10 per cent
of your income on heating your home. That makes the delivery of
fuel poverty programmes quite difficult because there are no specific
targets around fuel poverty. In terms of meeting targets that
we set out in our local area agreement we are dealing with people
who are not vulnerable, not necessarily meeting any targets under
NI187 (tackling fuel poverty).
Mr McCann: As far as the total
housing stock in Sheffield, 74 per cent of it is private sector,
of that we have 22,000 private rented stock. The conditions we
have at the moment, at 2002, were showing that 42 per cent of
that was non-decent.
Q143 Chair: Was that 42 per cent
of all private housing or the private rented?
Mr McCann: Private rented. We
have just carried out a new, up to date house condition survey.
We have not got the final details of it yet but it is showing
the amount of money needed, an early indication, to remove non-decency,
38 per cent of the 190,000 properties surveyed, it is looking
at £311 million.
Q144 Chair: The issue that we are
trying to get at, which was raised by one of the witnesses we
had in our first session, was whether local authorities are enforcing
standards on the private sector as a means of dealing with non-decent
homes, in which case you do not have to pay for them, or whether
you are persuading.
Mr McCann: We are doing a lot
of work with our private sector landlords.
Q145 Chair: Are you enforcing standards,
not doing a load of work with them?
Mr McCann: We are enforcing but
we are trying to make the private sector landlord a part of the
solution rather than to make them the problem. We are trying to
build a relationship with them which is starting to work very
well. We have a responsible landlording scheme in Sheffield which
is just coming up to the 500th member signing up to that. That
has worked very well because within that there is an accreditation
level which is linked to the universities as well for them recommending
landlords. There is a lot of work being done but again the biggest
problem is tee funding for it.
Mr Jones: We have an accreditation
scheme. The main thrust of our policy is to work with private
landlords but we will enforce HHSRS where we are just not able
to get compliance through working with landlords. What I would
say is that due to lack of resources we are not able to do that
in a strategic way, we are very much responding to complaints.
We do now have information from stock condition surveys about
where we have private landlords where there may be category one
hazards, but we do not have the resources to proactively go out
and deal with those. Although you say it does not cost anything,
theoretically that is right but ultimately we may need to do work
in default and clearly there is a cost to that. Ultimately we
should be able to get that back through charges but that could
be at any point in the future, so there is a cost even in enforcing
in the private sector.
Mr McCann: The cost is providing
the staff in order to deliver.
Chair: I understand that; that is the
point that Mr Jones has made. Thank you very much indeed.
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