Queen’s Speech: the new housing bills explained

Social Housing Regulation Bill

It has been nearly five years coming, but finally it appears as if the major reforms to social housing promised in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire are being brought into law in the form of the Social Housing Regulation Bill.

At the heart of this new bill will be the aim to increase social housing tenants’ rights to better homes and enhance their ability to hold landlords to account.

Much of this is in response to the revelations that have come out during the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that repeated complaints from the block’s residents about its safety fell on deaf ears.

The bill will include new legislation that will strengthen the powers of the English regulator and see its role expanded to cover consumer standards. To back this up, there will be new performance measures that social landlords will be judged on, such as repairs and complaint-handling.

However, documents published alongside the bill reveal new details on how this increased power will work. It includes giving the regulator powers that will see it impose emergency repairs in tenants’ homes where there is evidence of systemic failure by the landlord, or where an association is unable and unwilling to act.

There will also be a guarantee for the RSH to act more quickly when it has concerns about the decency of homes. This will be achieved by implementing laws in which the regulator only needs to give 48 hours’ notice before carrying out a survey on the property.

Both of these will be backed up by harsher penalties for those landlords that do not meet standards, with the RSH now being able to impose unlimited fines on those who provide inadequate housing.

Other parts of the bill that have previously been trailed include the introduction of new tenant satisfaction measures and giving the regulator power to inspect on consumer issues.

Under the new rules, housing association tenants will now be able to request information from their landlords under the Freedom of Information Act in a system that works in a similar way to council tenants.

Renters’ Reform Bill       

Theresa May was still prime minister when the Conservatives first promised to get rid of Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions, which charities have long pointed to as a major problem within England’s private rented sector. 

Now the pledge is finally set to become a reality as the government has vowed to legislate this year to remove Section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act, which currently allows landlords to evict tenants without giving a reason. 

For private landlords, many of which unsurprisingly do not support the change, ministers have said new stronger possession grounds will be introduced for incidences of anti-social behaviour or repeated incidences of rent arrears. 

Meanwhile, the Renters’ Reform Bill will also look to strengthen the rights of private renters by applying the legally binding Decent Homes Standard to the sector and introducing a new ombudsman for private landlords to help resolve issues without them having to go to court. 

A new property portal will also be introduced under the act, where landlords can access information about their obligations and tenants can get performance information that will help them hold their landlord to account.

Leasehold reforms

In addition to the new bills, the government highlighted some of the other wider housing reforms it has brought forward for residents who own their homes. This includes the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Act 2022, which comes into force in June. The speech said this was the first step in the government’s programme to implement leasehold and commonhold reform in this parliament.

While there will be no further legislation on the leasehold system this year, the government said it is still committed to its reform programme going forward. This will include future changes that will make it easier for leaseholders to extend their leases or buy freeholds, as well as give options to enfranchise residents and allow them to take control of the management of their building.

Other parts of these changes will look to improve transparency on service charges and other leasehold costs and protect them from unjustified legal costs.

All new leasehold houses will be banned under the planned changes and the government will continue to work with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to identify and investigate mis-selling of leasehold homes by builders. This comes after the CMA investigated and penalised a number of large house builders that have been found to use possibly unfair contract terms.  

Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will contain many of the policies trailed in February’s Levelling Up White Paper, alongside a number of policies from the largely abandoned Planning White Paper. 

In terms of planning, the bill is set to bring the new Infrastructure Levy, which ministers have previously said will replace Section 106. The documents accompanying the Queen’s Speech were light on detail here, only stating that one of the benefits of the bill will be “capturing more of the financial value created by development with a locally set, non-negotiable levy to deliver the infrastructure that communities need”.

The government said the bill will also introduce changes to the local plan process so that they are produced more quickly and can be more easily accessed by local communities. 

More broadly on levelling up, the bill will allow for the creation of a new model of combined authority, which the government is now calling the “county deal”. The model will allow local authorities to join up services and can potentially include new directly elected leaders’ titles. 

A duty will also be placed on the government to set levelling-up missions and produce an annual report updating the country on delivery of these tasks.