The Week in Housing: government outlines new rights for 11 million renters

Inside Housing was up in Liverpool this week for the inaugural Housing Community Summit, a joint event hosted by the Chartered Institute of Housing and National Housing Federation (NHF).

During the two day conference, Liverpool City Region mayor Steve Rotheram launched a public-private alliance that aims to accelerate the development of ultra low-carbon housing across the region.

In another session, Mr Rotheram suggested setting up a new Housing Revenue Account, due to the combined authority’s ability to borrow money at a cheaper rate, to help councils build homes.

The boss of the NHF admitted that estate regeneration projects in London failed to replace social homes because they were not funded enough by the government. Kate Henderson explained that developers were expected to rely on the cross-subsidy model to fund their regeneration schemes, which led to a net loss of social housing.

This is an admission that might have one’s eye on the government’s Autumn Statement as the sector waits patiently for what a new Affordable Homes Programme might look like.

With the health of the sector the subject of many sessions, a senior figure at the English regulator said housing associations in London that are under more financial pressure than elsewhere in the country are looking to merge with providers outside the capital.

Jonathan Walters, deputy chief executive at the Regulator of Social Housing, said: “In very simple terms, organisations that have significant exposures to the London housing market I think are the organisations that are dealing with the most immediate financial pressures.”

A flurry of such mergers could have some really negative unintended consequences for London’s social housing stock. Will non London-based providers really prioritise building in the capital? Or use those assets to borrow against building more social homes in their original regions?

Sticking with funding, Peckham MP Miatta Fahnbulleh told delegates that the government will look to prioritise social housing as part of its £6.6bn retrofit agenda.

Ms Fahnbulleh said: “We are determined to move at pace, you know, we’ve got to work straight away to ensure that some of our current schemes, including the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF), and the Home Upgrade grant for energy saving upgrades.”

In a deep dive into the SHDF, published this week, Inside Housing asked landlords about their experience of this net zero policy on the eve of the next, and largest, wave of the fund. The sector shared its thoughts about how you can make net zero can happen in practice.

Talks around a government-backed scheme to help fund retrofit in a bid to find a way to finance costly improvement work have swirled around the sector for some time. This week, The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC) and Lloyds Banking Group revealed that they are working to launch a financial debt guarantee for housing providers to access funding for retrofit projects.

David Cleary, managing director and head of housing for commercial banking at Lloyds, said: “We’re very close to announcing the retrofit scheme, which will be partly backed by the UK Infrastructure Bank.”

THFC also reported its highest pre-tax surplus in its 37-year history, as it sets out a “refreshed” corporate strategy.

While funding for retrofit has been a huge issue for the sector, one large contractor decried quality standards as “a bit over the top” for simple projects. Carl Yale, regional refurbishment director at Lovell, argued that the PAS 2035 standard was overly complex for retrofit measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation.

However, Mr Yale said that for complex interventions, such as solid wall insulation, “PAS is fantastic”.

On the impact of standards, one panel discussed the sector’s concerns over the introduction of the Future Homes Standard. Ruth Ryan, assistant director of affordable housing delivery at Homes England, told the conference that landlords are waiting anxiously and want certainty around the green standards for new build homes, which are set to come into force in 2025.

She added that there is “a lot of potentially still holding your breath” to “understand exactly” what it is.

With Ms Ryan outlining concerns with the Future Homes Standard, her boss explained why the Affordable Homes Programme is “struggling” to deliver in rural areas.

Peter Denton, chief executive of the government’s housing delivery agency, said: “To get contractors to go out into more rural areas… just the nuts and bolts of doing it are vastly more expensive on average. I think it’s 20% from memory. Just getting contractors is difficult.”

Bringing Inside Housing’s conference courage to an end was the Housing Ombudsman, who shared his views on how complaints could test a landlord’s culture and the impact of converging compensation across the sector.

Ahead of the event in Liverpool, the fall-out from last week’s second and final Grenfell Tower Inquiry report continued over the weekend.

Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire criticised former prime minister David Cameron for his claim that fire safety regulations were not part of his government’s ‘red tape challenge’. Campaigners and survivors’ groups have accused him of having not read, or misunderstood, the report.

The inquiry concluded that a “poorly run”, “complacent” and “defensive” government department “failed to act on what it knew” about dangerous cladding in the years before Grenfell, amid an enthusiasm for deregulation that “dominated” its thinking.

Inside Housing contributing editor Peter Apps, who won the Orwell Prize for his book Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen, said that Lord Cameron’s statement was “demonstrably and very clearly total bullshit”.

Someone else looking to lay blame elsewhere was former housing secretary and Conservative MP Michael Gove, who claimed that his efforts to restrict the import of products that were on Grenfell Tower were blocked by the Treasury.

At the same time, members of the House of Lords have called for the Building Research Establishment (BRE) to be stripped of its responsibility for certifying modern methods of construction.

Former Labour minister Lord Rooker said: “Given the Grenfell report, the BRE should no longer be involved in certifying modern methods of offsite construction techniques or products. Such work should be seen to be fully independent and professional.”

The report explained that BRE was a testing house for product manufacturers and an advisor to the government on building science. Its facilities were used for key tests by Kingspan and Celotex, and the report found serious shortcomings in its actions relating to them.

In a debate in parliament, the building safety minister said reported there are up to 7,000 buildings requiring remediation that have not yet applied for the government’s cladding safety scheme. Rushanara Ali said: “Counting the buildings we know about is not enough."

At the start of the week, Inside Housing revealed that Tower Hamlets Council will be able to place homeless families in temporary accommodation that is more than 90 minutes away from the borough, after removing the distance cap. On Thursday, the council announced a U-turn.

Meanwhile, London boroughs revealed they are at risk of exceeding their homelessness budgets by £250m in 2024-25 despite an increase in government funding, as temporary accommodation costs soar to around £3m a day.

This week’s round-up ends with some positive news for assessing the impact of living in temporary accommodation on children. The government intends to include details of the ages of children in temporary accommodation, in response to Inside Housing’s ongoing research into the numbers of toddlers and babies in temporary accommodation.

Have a good weekend.

Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing

Say hello: stephen.delahunty@oceanmedia.co.uk

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