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House adjourned at twenty minutes past nine o'clock.

Written Statements

Wednesday 7 June 2006

 
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Housing: Decent Homes Programme

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Andrews): My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

I am today announcing the final bidding round of our decent homes programme. Applications for the 2006 housing transfer programme and the final round for new ALMOs will need to be submitted by 31 July 2006.

This is a key milestone in a major government programme to improve the quality of social rented housing. In 1997 we were faced with 2.2 million social tenants who lived in homes that were not decent. More than half a million council tenants did not have central heating, 2 million did not have double glazing and 1.2 million were in fuel poverty.

Already the decent homes programme has reduced the number of non-decent homes by 1.2 million and many more have had improvements. By 2010 3.6 million homes will have been refurbished under the programme as additional homes have faced deterioration since 1997. Around 8 million people will have seen their home transformed.

The Government have increased by 30 per cent in real terms the amount spent directly by local authorities on refurbishing and improving council homes; this year it is about £1,100 per home compared with spend equivalent of £800 in 1997. More than 90 local councils are able to make all their homes decent as a result of this investment.

On top of this, the ALMO programme has provided an extra £3.7 billion since 2002 to help, to date, a further 56 areas improve council homes. In total, councils have invested over £20 billion since 1997 in improving the homes they own, using the investment by Government. In addition, £7.4 billion private funding has been levered through stock transfer and private finance initiatives.

Work in hand and schemes already on our ALMO, transfer and PFI programmes will mean that around 95 per cent of social housing will meet the decency standard by 2010, transforming the lives of tenants up and down the country. The majority of these improvements will have been in the most deprived areas.

Today we are announcing further support for the additional homes not covered by the current programme. The final bidding round will enable councils that have selected ALMO or transfer in the options appraisal process to bid for a place on the
 
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relevant programme. Bids will need to be received by 31 July. A bidding round for PFI has already taken place.

The decent homes programme has resulted in much greater tenant involvement in decision-making about their homes. Tenants have participated in options appraisals and are board members of ALMOs and housing associations set up through transfer. We now wish to go further in supporting greater tenant involvement in the management and ownership of their homes. Therefore, as part of this bidding round, we will promote consideration of options such as Community Gateway, community mutual approach and community land trusts as additional ways to meet the decent homes target and go beyond that target in future. Where local authorities, with their tenants, want to take forward tenant ownership options for transfer, we will consider extending the date for submitting their bid beyond 31 July.

We recognise that the decent homes programme needs to support the creation of decent communities. In many areas the decent homes programme has already made a real difference to the lives of tenants by modest improvements to essentially good-quality housing alongside improved services, helping to create sustainable mixed communities. But more radical solutions are required to transform some of the poorest neighbourhoods.

A number of local authorities and housing associations have already embarked on transforming such areas into mixed communities, harnessing the impetus of the decent homes programme and the better use of their assets alongside other funding streams. The review of housing and regeneration, which includes the roles of the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships, is looking at ways to extend and strengthen these programmes. All engaged in this transformation know it takes time to get it right; major change cannot be achieved in a few years.

We also want to see greater investment in new-build programmes in local areas. Local authorities, ALMOs and stock-transfer housing associations all need to play a greater role in increasing supply as well as managing existing homes. We are exploring ways to give excellent local authorities and local authorities with three-star ALMOs greater flexibility to use their own resources to build and own homes for rent and to increase affordable homes to buy in their areas.

The decent homes programme is making good progress. The vast majority of social landlords will be expected to ensure all homes are decent by 2010. But we will negotiate individual delivery timescales to allow some areas to continue beyond 2010 where they are starting late on the programme, or where additional time is needed to ensure value for money, and deliver mixed communities and the right balance of refurbishment and new build.

This bidding round will be the last in the decent homes programme. In future we want decisions on investment in improving social housing to be considered alongside decisions on the other investment necessary to deliver sustainable mixed
 
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communities, not as a separate programme. We want councils, residents and local partners, such as ALMOs and RSLs, to have more flexibility on local housing decisions. Local area agreements could offer the opportunity to do this and to introduce greater flexibility for local authorities on how to achieve different priorities and explore different models for managing homes and encouraging new social housing. We will explore how to achieve this in the long-term as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review.

We want to explore the idea of allowing some excellent local authorities and those with three-star ALMOs to operate their finances outside the housing subsidy system. We believe this approach has potential to introduce the right incentives to secure this sustainability of investment. But the approach also has costs and risks both for Government and for local authorities. We intend to build on the work already done by inviting a small number of excellent local authorities and local authorities with three-star ALMOs to work with the Government to establish in detail the costs and benefits of this approach and to determine whether greater value for money could be achieved. This work will be conducted as part of the CSR.

The ALMO review also raised other issues which impact on the successful operation of ALMOs. The Government are publishing the outcome of the review today at www.communities.gov.uk/decenthomes.

We are also publishing today a discussion paper which sets the decent homes programme in its broader context at www.communities.gov.uk/decenthomes. We want to use this document as the basis for stakeholder engagement over the coming months to bring together ideas that we can consider in CSR07. The discussion paper specifically seeks views on: getting the most out of existing housing revenue account assets; ways in which local authorities can be involved in planning for affordable housing and playing the biggest role they can in generating new investment; and barriers that prevent tenants having a greater role in management and ownership of social housing.

Ofsted

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis): My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Alan Johnson) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The Education and Inspections Bill, which is before Parliament, will make provision for an expansion of Ofsted's remit, creating a single inspectorate for education, children's services and skills. The new Ofsted board is the centrepiece of the robust modernised governance arrangements that the enlarged inspectorate needs to support and hold the chief inspector to account in delivering the responsibilities of that office. The board will be
 
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responsible for determining the strategic priorities for the chief inspector, setting the strategic objectives and targets relating to these priorities and securing that the chief inspector's functions are performed efficiently and effectively.

Appointment of a chair and members to form the non-executive board needs to be undertaken soon to ensure that the board is in place to oversee a smooth transition to the new Ofsted, and that public confidence in the inspectorate is maintained during this important period.

Parliamentary approval for any additional resources for the new governance arrangements will be sought in a supplementary estimate for the Department for Education and Skills. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £85,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund to start the process of putting in place these new governance arrangements.

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