Appendix 3: Letter from the Chair of the
Committee to the Minister for Housing
Rt Hon Grant Shapps, MP
Minister for Housing and Local Government
Dear Grant,
Response to the Committee's report Beyond
Decent Homes
Thank you for your letters of 27 July and 11 November
in response to the report of the Committee in the last Parliament,
Beyond Decent Homes.
The Committee is grateful to you for your response
to this Report, but notes that it falls short of the detailed
response to each recommendation which would normally be expected.
Clearly the change of Government since the Report was published
has had a significant impact on policy in this particular area,
and we appreciate that a full response on each point is therefore
not necessarily appropriate. However, having considered your response,
the Committee would be grateful for a more detailed reply on the
following issues raised in the Report.
1. Our predecessors devoted a substantial section
of their Report to consideration of the thermal comfort criterion
on the Decent Homes standard. It noted that "The evidence
[submitted to the Committee's inquiry] was almost universally
negative about the level at which the thermal comfort criterion
is set" (para 53) and "Other evidence we received criticised
the terms in which the criterion is quantified" (para 54).
However, your response indicates that you have no plans to alter
the existing standard. The Committee would be grateful for
your response to its conclusions on the thermal comfort criterion
of the existing standard in the light of the evidence the Committee
received. In particular, the Committee would be grateful for a
response to recommendations 13, 14 and 7, which address this issue.
2. At recommendation 9 (paragraph 63), our predecessors
noted the Household Energy Management Strategy produced by the
last Government, and the introduction of a new "Warm Homes"
standard. The Committee would be grateful for an indication
of how the current Government intends to take forward the Household
Energy Management Strategy, and how the "Warm Homes"
standard would complement the Decent Homes standard and its thermal
comfort criterion.
3. Our predecessors' report also comments on
the role which ALMOs have played in achieving the Decent Homes
standard, concluding that "the ten-year experience of ALMOs
has generated improvements in asset management of social sector
stock that are not simply attributable to additional funding"
(para 121). Recommendation 19, at that paragraph, calls for the
Government "[to] make arrangements for the continued management
of housing stock by ALMOs, including by providing for access to
funding under the new self-financing system. It also concludes
that "local authorities should not take their ALMOs back
in-house until they have conducted a ballot of tenants and received
an endorsement by tenants of that plan". The Committee
would be grateful for a response to the conclusions and recommendations
contained in para 121 of the Report.
4. At para 159, our predecessors raised a specific
issue affecting ALMOs' ability to make improvements to the estates
they manage. The Committee would be grateful for a response
to the conclusion in para 159 of the Report.
5. In paras 153 and 154, our predecessors drew
attention to an inequity in funding available to vulnerable people
in the social sector for energy saving measures which it first
noted in its report on CLG's Departmental Annual Report 2008.
The Committee would be grateful for a response to the conclusion
in para 154 of the Report.
6. The Committee notes that there is now no longer
a specific funding stream for private sector renewal. That would
appear to lend even greater urgency to our predecessors' recommendation,
at para 220, that CLG undertake or commission work to develop
means of levering in private finance for the improvement of private
sector stock, and that the results of this work should be made
widely available to local authorities, who should be encouraged
to develop schemes appropriate to their areas to facilitate access
to those funds. The Committee would be grateful for a response
to this recommendation.
Please provide us with a response by Tuesday 4th
January.
Yours
Clive Betts MP
Chair, Communities and Local Government Committee
8 December 2010
| 
