Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
352-359)
RT HON
JOHN HEALEY
MP, MR PETER
MARSH AND
SIR BOB
KERSLAKE
7 DECEMBER 2009
Q352 Chair: Minister, welcome to you
and to Mr Marsh and Sir Bob to this final session of Decent Homes.
We have a long list of questions we want to try and get through,
so we will try to keep our questions fairly brief, and we would
be grateful if people could keep their answers fairly pithy, if
possible.
John Healey: Thank you. I assume,
but just to check, that the Committee knows well Bob Kerslake,
who runs the Communities Agency, and Pete Marsh who runs the Tenant
Services Authority.
Q353 Mr Betts: We know them better
than you, I should imagine!
John Healey: You could say they
have been in post longer than I have. That is part of the reason
for me bringing them along today. Can I say that we are very pleased
to be here—and I speak on behalf of Peter and Bob when I
say that. We welcome this inquiry, and I will explain why in my
answers.
Q354 Chair: If I could start with
the first one. We are anxious to discover what the Government's
intentions are beyond 2010. Is it the Government's intention to
establish a new target to maintain or indeed even extend the Decent
Homes Policy after 2010?
John Healey: The short answer
on the extension of the programme first: this is a national refurb
programme without parallel or precedent. It stems from the £19
billion backlog in repairs that we had in these homes in 1997.
It is a programme that I am very proud of, as a Labour Housing
Minister. It is a programme to which we are totally committed,
a programme that we will finish and we will fund—and we
will do so beyond 2010, as necessary.
Q355 Chair: So the current target
will be met beyond 2010, but is there an intention at the moment
to then set a successor programme either in principle or in detail?
John Healey: I think that to describe
anything as a "successor programme" is probably misleading.
If you look at the enormous progress and undertaking that has
taken place in the last eight years, we are in a position where
at the beginning of this financial year, in April 2009, we had
seen the total investment over the previous eight years of about
£33 billion. We had seen the proportion of housing association
and council homes that were non-decent reduced to 14 per cent.
We will continue the programme until the end of 2010, which we
have undertaken to do. We estimate that by then around 92 per
cent will be decent; in other words, fewer than one in 12 will
remain non-decent when taken across the local authority and housing
association sector. That will require us to continue the programme
in order to complete it; so I prefer to think of it as a completion
of the current massive national refurb programme rather than talk
of a successor programme post 2010.
Q356 Chair: The witnesses that we
had just before you, Minister, estimated that from the England
Housing Survey—they reckoned that beyond 2010 about 20 to
25 per cent of social stock would be non-decent. That would include
that which is currently non-decent and will not be done by 2010,
plus homes which might currently be decent but which will become
non-decent because of the passage of time and therefore come into
the programme. They reckon it is 20 to 25 per cent that will need
to be done after 2010. Are you saying the Government is committed,
whatever the percentage, to make sure that 100 per cent is done?
John Healey: We are committed
to completing the programme, correct. I do not recognise those
figures, but it is certainly true—and we can trace this
largely from the landlord reporting rather than the English Home
Condition Survey, which of course we moved away from—although
we published both—to make our main way of measuring the
programme in 2002 the landlord figures. We can trace that in the
local authority sector but not so easily in the housing association
sector. What I mean by that is we have data that allows us to
say that since 2002 we reckon almost 1.4 million local authority
homes have been done up under the Decent Homes Programme. There
has been a reduction of the non-decent homes by just over a million.
We reckon there are probably around 800,000 local authority homes
during that period that have become non-decent, although that
is probably an under-estimate because some local authorities do
not provide us with the returns. That is a figure that also reflects
and takes account of an estimate for demolitions and transfers
into the housing association sector. The Committee will grasp
immediately that the scale of the programme is bigger than the
simple headline numbers. A comparable measure of that is in the
housing association sector where we are not in a position to estimate
the proportions of homes that have become non-decent. But over
that same period we have seen in the housing association sector
a net reduction of the non-decent homes of about 80,000, but of
course during that period quite a lot of local authority homes
were transferred into the housing association sector and dealt
with and done up as a result.
Q357 Chair: There does seem to be
a disagreement, and the issue about the standards we will come
back to a bit later. That is another area where we have had mixed
views.
John Healey: I am sorry, what
is the area of disagreement? Your principal question was: will
we complete this programme and will we bring up to a decent standard
the local authority and housing association homes? The answer
is "yes"; but it goes beyond that because the task then
is to make sure that they are maintained at that Decent Homes
standard, and that is exactly what we are looking to do in the
dismantling of the Housing Revenue Account subsidy system, which
this Committee and I have discussed previously.
Q358 Chair: Indeed, and which we
will discuss a bit more. I think the area of disagreement is in
the Department's estimate of the number of non-decent homes after
2010 and the estimates that we had from the three witnesses before,
who were more or less agreed that it was in the range of 20 to
25 per cent. That will obviously affect the amount of money that
will be needed to get them up to spec.
John Healey: If I may say so,
you have got the advantage of having heard their evidence—and
I have not. Perhaps Pete Marsh has a view on it.
Mr Marsh: I can certainly comment
on the housing associations, which are bodies that we currently
regulate prior to 31 March next year. Our current information
is that we are currently at 92 per cent compliance as of April
this year; 95 per cent compliance by traditional housing associations
and 88 per cent compliance with those associations that have recently
taken on stock as part of the stock transfer programme. It is
only those associations that have recently taken on non-decent
homes that have given promises to tenants to convert those homes
to decency beyond 2010 but we have a number of homes that will
become decent post 2010. The important thing about that is that
the standards that will come into force from April next year have
passported in, from a direction that the DCLG issued to us on
10 November, the requirement for all landlords to maintain homes
at the decency standard or at a higher standard if that was a
condition of grant funding from the HCA previously.
Sir Bob Kerslake: The thrust of
this discussion is not about—as I hear what you are saying—the
delivery of the programme that exists at the moment, but the extent
to which homes come into non-decency. That will happen in part
because of the passage of time, so if it would be calculated as
falling within the time period, say for your kitchen to be repaired,
some will fall out of that period. I have not seen the number
you have referred to, so it is difficult to comment on that scale
without seeing the number. The challenge is different for a housing
authority that has already made the big step towards decency and
maintaining that as stock comes in than it is about getting to
that place in the first place. You would expect that they would
not leave that issue alone and would invest time and resources
into the delivery of that themselves. Beyond that immediate period
in terms of non-decency, as the Minister has said, the debate
comes into a wider area of debate about the review of the Housing
Revenue Account.
Q359 Mr Betts: Moving on to the issue
of ALMOs, we have had some evidence in from the National Federation
of ALMOs, amongst others, who I think are a little concerned and
looking for reassurances that the backlog, which does exist even
in the terms you describe—there are still a number of properties
that need to be brought up to a decent standard at 2010—they
are looking for certainty that that money will be available so
that they can plan with certainty and deliver the programme.
John Healey: Mr Betts, they can
plan with certainty if they have a Labour Government after the
next election.
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