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Dispatches from Housing 2019 – Tuesday
What was discussed and debated as the great and good of the housing sector gathered in Manchester for Housing 2019? Inside Housing’s news team presents the lowdown from Tuesday. Photography by Guzelian
The opening day of Housing 2019 dawned to grey and drizzly skies in Manchester this morning. Many delegates looked first tense, then hopeful and finally despairing. But for those who were not following the cricket, and those who needed distracting from it, there was much to discuss on day one.
Much of the debate surrounded land, diversity and tenant engagement. There was also a headline appearance from a housing minister focused on design standards and a buzz about an outgoing prime minister, who will be joining us tomorrow.
The eye of the beholder
Who knows how much longer housing minister Kit Malthouse will be with us?
The North West Hampshire MP made an abortive bid for the leadership, has leant his name to an attempted Brexit compromise and is an ally of the mop-headed runaway favourite for the next prime minister, having served in his team at City Hall.
All of this points towards a promotion when the inevitable reshuffle happens, but for now Mr Malthouse remains housing’s man – and if his year in the job will be remembered for one thing (and only one thing) it is the focus he has placed on “beauty” in the design of new homes.
His keynote address at the conference today played close to this theme, after he got in his now regular gag about the number of conferences in the housing calendar.
“Ask yourself, why aren’t you welcomed to an area?” he asked delegates. “Is it something to do with the design, the style?”
“Are we building the conservation areas of the future,” he added later on, “or are we going to look back in 50 years’ time with a bulldozer?”
But what is ‘beauty’ and surely is it not too subjective a quality to be mandated by the state? “Beauty is an ephemeral thing... but you sort of know it when you see it,” said the housing minister – not providing much clarity on how these new standards will be designed.
Beauty and design quality took up much of the minister's brief address – although perhaps the more meaty policy notes will be delivered by his senior colleagues over the next two days. On which, see below.
Mayday! Mayday!
The rumours began swirling this morning that Theresa May, our soon-to-be-ex prime minister, would be attending the conference. And sure enough, it was confirmed by mid-afternoon that she is spending one of the last few days of her premiership schlepping up to Manchester tomorrow to address delegates in the main auditorium at 3pm.
This follows hot on the heels of her appearance at the National Housing Federation conference (pictured), and is another sign of the importance she placed on housing policy in her stint in Number 10, even if the actual delivery of new policy was always stymied by the big bad B-word.
So what will she say tomorrow? Conference whisperers suggested to Inside Housing that it will not be the announcement of the long-awaited Social Housing White Paper - although she may have something to say on its timescale.
In fact, the suggestion was that she may not have a major policy to announce at all, but instead a statement of the importance her government continues to place on housing.
While this was and is welcome, the questions will inevitably turn to whether the eventual successor agrees. So another big bad B-word (with all due respect to Jeremy Hunt) once again overshadows Ms May.
Groundhog day
A fixture of the opening day of the housing conference is the address from Terrie Alafat, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH). It’s perhaps a moment for delegates to pause and reflect on the year that has passed since last time they were sitting in these seats, and it seems Ms Alafat was having similar thoughts herself this morning as she welcomed the conference to “Housing 2018”.
After correcting herself, she launched into a quick-fire run through of all the most serious issues affecting the social housing sector, repeating the CIH’s joint call with other sector bodies for more funding for social housing.
She also renewed her lobbying for the Right to Buy to be suspended, and called on the government to provide certainty on future funding arrangements for support for the most vulnerable people.
Tenants in the driving seat
‘Tenant engagement’ has been one of the sector’s buzziest buzzwords in the past two years and it was no surprise to see the topic featuring high on the agenda today.
For those not up with the jargon, it means the process of giving residents a say – or actively getting them involved – in the running of an organisation.
An early session on The Fringe programme questioned “how can we put tenants back in the driving seat?”. “When on earth did we kick tenants out of the driving seat?,” asked Samia Badani, co-chair of the Notting Dale Residents Association – which surrounds Grenfell Tower.
Speakers at the session called for a power shift and a move to genuinely give tenants the power to make decisions rather than just provide feedback, with 2015 research showing the savings that can be delivered via this approach cited.
“We get asked to do bingo nights but we can do so much more,” summed up Ms Badani.
Catherine Ryder, director of policy and research at the National Housing Federation, welcomed the idea of a new regulator to look after tenants rights but said the sector should not wait – culture change can happen now.
We need permission to land
Land is another topic which has grabbed the agenda of late, with an increasingly widely accepted consensus that some sort of reform is necessary if we are ever to solve the housing crisis in this country.
At the conference it fell to Stephen Kinsella, executive director of land at Homes England, to open the debate on this topic. Mr Kinsella’s argument was that we need organisations that can act as master developers: providing top heavy investment in social infrastructure so that sites can be built out at a greater pace than previously seen.
The chief executives of large social landlords in the audience will be hopeful that this strange new type of player has a name starting with ‘hou’ and ending with ‘ciation’. You can fill in the rest.
During the same session, Julian Keith, a partner at Trowers & Hamlins, predicted that the end of Help to Buy could see the end of “mono-tenure” developments on large sites: forcing developers to look for a wider mix of tenures to make their schemes stack up, which will be beneficial for delivery rates.
Don’t ‘rainbow wash’ the sector
The challenge of making the sector more diverse is a subject which has come up at many housing conferences in the past.
In fact it has been discussed, as Tom Murtha, the former chief executive of Midland Heart, pointed out, since he first attended this conference in Harrogate 40 years ago.
“I think the sector’s record on this is pathetic,” he said, before calling for specific regulation on this issue.
He wasn't the only one who was in the mood to give the sector a hard time about its record on diversity. Denise Fowler, chief executive of Women’s Pioneer Housing (pictured), said: “I see a lot of chief executives on twitter who say Happy International Women's Day, Black History Month – isn't it brilliant? All of that is great but it's not enough, this is not just a nice cosy subject which you can rainbow wash for want of a better word.”
Earlier delegates heard Raj Patel, chief executive of Housing Diversity Network, call for the sector to try and become as diverse as the client group it wants to house – not just existing tenants – and Bob Green, chief executive of Stonewall Housing, warn that social housing is “not a safe place for LGBT people, that’s to live or to work”.
On this crucial issue then, there is still much to be done.
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The latest news headlines from the conference:
Next PM will be committed to social housing, says Brokenshire
Homes England strategic partners to get £1bn cash boost
John Healey blasts May's housing record
Don't wait for Hackitt legislation to push ahead with building safety, says MHCLG official
Theresa May: ‘social housing a victim of drive for homeownership’
‘No-deal Brexit an opportunity for housing’, claim sector figures
Banks’ appetite to lend threatens offsite take-up, warns major landlord
Minister: funding allocations should be based on joint-agency working
Sector warned that fire safety costs could eat up HRA cap windfall
Theresa May to give speech at Housing 2019 conference
Regulator ‘found no breaches’ following Dispatches programme on Sanctuary
No funding for removal of combustible balconies, says Malthouse
MHCLG housing supply chief: affordable housing grant increase ‘on the table’ for Spending Review
‘We have got to do the right thing’ on affordable housing, says land director of Homes England
Council boss warns against local authority ‘can’t do’ attitude towards housebuilding
Terrie Alafat says Spending Review must ‘make a real difference’
Sector needs £146bn from government over a decade to end housing crisis, says NHF
Savills housing sector survey: building homes more important than existing stock to housing leaders
Morning Briefing: thousands descend on Manchester for Housing 2019
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