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Under the Decent Homes Programme, over a million homes have been improved since 2001. The living standards of vulnerable households will have been greatly improved by the installation of, for example, 810,000 new kitchens, 610,000 new bathrooms and 1,140,000 new central heating systems. There have also been wider benefits such as more tenant involvement in housing decisions and jobs created in deprived areas.
We welcome the improvements made and the substantial progress towards the original target of all social housing being of a decent standard by December 2010. However, despite this progress, the target will not be met. By the Department for Communities and Local Government's (the Department) own estimates, 305,000 homes will still be non-decent at that date and the last of these will not be decent until 2018-19. The Department needs to do more to ensure that landlords can complete this outstanding work and that properties are not allowed to fall back into disrepair.
Full accountability for public money is not optional and the Department needs to improve its financial control over this Programme. It is still not clear how much the Department itself has actually spent on the Programme and we are not convinced that the Department has secured best value from the funds given to Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMOs). Before asking local authorities and Registered Social Landlords to bring their social housing stock up to a reasonable standard, the Department should have prepared a proper estimate of how much it would cost them. According to the best information available to the Department, it will have cost local authorities and Registered Social Landlords approximately £37 billion by 2010-11. The Department has also not done enough to identify and share good practice with social landlords.
The Department lacks some basic management information on the Programme, such as reliable statistics on the number of homes made decent or not. The Department needs to address its information deficiencies in order to evaluate properly the impact of the Programme. It should also ensure that it builds in adequate arrangements for monitoring and evaluation from the start on any other programmes.
The Department also needs to improve its evaluation of the private sector element of the Programme. It does not know how much local authorities have spent on this element, and it will need to review the performance of individual authorities if good practice is to be identified and disseminated.
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] we examined the extent to which the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and Communities Agency are effective in overseeing the Decent Homes Programme.
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