The government have responded to rent setting consultation in November 2018, setting rents for the next 5 years.

It paves the way for rent increases from 2020, which will follow a long period of rent stability.

CPI plus 1% will start for 5 years from 2020.

The regulator will re write the rent standard and issues this.

At the same time, the government will make changes to its own statutory instruments.

Here is the consultation response from the government in more detail:

Consultation_Response_document_-_25-02-19

More than 165,000 of the most affordable rented homes have been lost across England in just six years, according to  analysis from the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH).who predict the loss will reach 199,000 by 2020 – making it increasingly difficult, for people on lower incomes to access a decent home at a price they can afford.

Funding for social rent is about 30-40 per cent cheaper than market rent.

It was cut by the coalition government in 2010. Since then, funding was targeted towards homes for ‘affordable rent’, which can be up to 80 per cent of market rents.

Figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Homes England show that 117,828 local authority homes and 47,869 housing association homes for social rent were lost between 2012 and 2018. Despite some continued new build for social rent, numbers have continued to fall – because of right to buy sales and properties being converted to ‘affordable rent’ or demolished.

Based on current trends, CIH is projecting that 199,000 homes for social rent will have been lost between 2012 and 2020 – 140,828 council homes and 57,869 housing association homes. Those figures include the loss of an estimated 3,000 homes due to the West Midlands pilot of the extension of right to buy to housing associations.

Housing associations including Vivid, Karbon Homes, Magenta Living, Cairn, First Ark and Regenda Homes were all involved in developing the code of practice.

Current regulations do not currently allow housing associations to gain legal access to properties to check electrical safety, despite having statutory obligations to ensure electrical safety is tested every five years. The new code includes a change to this rule, so the policy is in line with rules for local authorities and for gas safety checks in affordable homes. The majority of fires in the home start through electrical faults and the code also looks at best practice in electrical safety for the sector.

The new code is also supported by a number of local authorities, including South Cambridgeshire District Council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council and Winchester City Council.

The ‘Code of Practice is for Management of Electrotechnical Care in Social Housing’  and must be agreed by parliament before implementation.

This IPPR short briefing seeks to assess these claims, exploring the role of state aid rules in the EU and how these might change under different Brexit scenarios:

1548088552_brexit-state-aid-jan19

IPPR suggest that Human-induced environmental change is occurring at an unprecedented scale and pace and the window of opportunity to avoid catastrophic outcomes in societies around the world is rapidly closing. These outcomes include economic instability, large-scale involuntary migration, conflict, famine and the potential collapse of social and economic systems. The historical disregard of environmental considerations in most areas of policy has been a catastrophic mistake.

In response, this paper argues that three shifts in understanding across political and policy communities are required: of the scale and pace of environmental breakdown, the implications for societies, and the subsequent need for transformative change.

Here is the paper:

this-is-a-crisis-feb19

Thanks to WVHT for hosting in sunny Cheshire

This post was updated  on 20.2.19, with the latest information from the originally names transparency charter

The Hackitt report into Grenfell Tower – Resident Voice actions

The report into the fire at Grenfell Tower suggested changes in hearing from residents and a few new regulations to support this – not only for high rise buildings!

Yvonne ran  through some of the specifics on recommendations about the resident voice, followed by a discussion on any changes already completed and planned by landlords.

Here is the presentation:

Hackitt – Residents Voice S.Net 2018pptx

We discussed some examples of good practice on digital enlightenment – see the slides and agreed to invite Michael from Stickyworld to a future meeting

Impact reporting – the theory and the practice

Matt Haworth (Reason Digital & Impact Co-Founder) Bethan Williams (Impact reporting) and Jamie Dickinson, Head of Social Value (Places for People)

Some HAs had purchased “Impact” to help them understand the impact of their work on customer engagement and the value this brings. Bethan and Jamie demonstrated the tool and explain how it works in practice at PFP.

The presentation was too big to download to the site, message me and i can try and send it to you. – sorry about that!

It follows your supply chain and your work with tenants

Impact had done a great deal of work in the public and private sector on gathering social responsibility information, including the BBC, they have written a digital app to collect social responsibility/impact data, which was demo’d and seems easy to use and to tailor to your workforce.

It includes the ability to collect data from social housing and supported housing work, leisure centre sponsorship and the provision of affordable housing, financial and other inclusion, other interventions, so all staff can engage and capture data and  VFM work on efficiency as well as carbon footprint information. it enables stories to be captured and shared to provide real examples of the difference made by landlords. you can also add snaps shots of work which is picked up in an easy summary dashboard of how the day job makes a difference. (Monthly subscription and no up front costs)

Here are Matt’s contact details, he would be happy to demo it in your own org

MATT HAWORTH, Co-founder
matt.haworth@reasondigital.com

Places for People attended and explained how they used the programme across all staff.

Generally they use the HACT model of social impact and capture this on a mobile phone app – all staff are involved and date collection is easy as it links to the day job.

Transparency and Accountability – a Customer Charter?

Yvonne shared some information from other transparency charters relating to accountability and give an update of some of the work already being done in the sector on this. Followed by a discussion. The NHF have commissioned Centre for Public Scrutiny (CFPS) to do a price fo work to scan other sectors for work on transparency following criticisms of the sector one year on that there has been little response to Grenfell.

Here is the report:

Offer_For_Tenants_discussion_paper_-_web

The consultation was open for about 6 weeks and is intended to be followed up with further consultation, the NHF was under pressure to act quickly to get this out. we agreed summer consultation had been a missed opportunity

Here is the presentation

Transparency S.Net 4th July YD

There was general support for the work but a feeling that what gets measured gets done and whether this would be forgotten in years to come.

generally they felt that active tenant would be disappointed by the lack of legislation and regulation and this would be without teeth.

 UPDATE – TOGETHER WITH TENANTS

On 19th March 2018, the 2nd consultation paper has emerged, here is the paper:

Together_with_Tenants_-_draft_plan_190219_CLEAN

The closing date for consultation is mid April, so we will discuss this at the next S.Net meeting, but you may also wish to pick this up with your tenants and residents and your EMT and Board. whilst it is an NHF initiative from the NHF – there is no problem in this going multi tenure surely?

On the Couch

• Estate Walkabouts

Incommunities requested support from the group

This is the summary of feedback discussed:

Estate Walkabouts

• Fire safety – Tenant scrutiny – Trafford Housing Trust

THT have set up a specific high rise group. Things were going well and it was less of a meeting which got sidetracked and the new group were very focussed. They asked for examples of other similar projects.

Leeds has a long standing HR group and have a post Grenfell plan for their 60+ tower blocks which they are happy to share with the group.

• A new deal for tenants – Human City (YD)

Yvonne drew attention to this report, which is not yet published and focused on stigma of social housing

The report has not yet been published – keep an eye on the Human City website

Reports

Post Green Paper

Yvonne to call an Unconference

Future meetings for 2018/19

Thursday 4^th October, Trafford Housing Trust, 10.30-2.30

• Qualtrics
• HACT customer satisfaction report – not yet released
• Green paper on Housing and its impact

The latest news on Universal Credit

Already in 2019 we’ve seen several  high-profile media attention while others, although equally significant, have slipped by relatively unnoticed. They fall within four broad areas:

• Changes to the work allowance
• Migration from legacy benefits
• The two-child limit
• Treatment of pension age claimants

Thanks to our friends in CIH for sharing this narrative:

“Starting with the least controversial first – as announced in the Budget, the work allowance will be raised by £1,000 per year from April for households with children and certain disabled people without. This is worth £630 a year and is of course welcome, but it only restores the work allowance to roughly where it was before the cuts made in the summer 2015 Budget. And it does nothing for households without children who had their work allowance reduced to zero – a loss of around £840 for each household member.

A lot of media attention was given to the universal credit migration programme – the process whereby those on old-style ‘legacy benefits’ are transferred to universal credit. A significant milestone was passed in December, with all Jobcentre areas in the UK are now running the universal credit ‘full service’. This means that no new claims for legacy benefits (apart from those described below) can be made. Claimants who now lose one of their legacy benefits through a change of circumstances cannot get their lost income replaced except by claiming universal credit, at which point they ‘naturally migrate’ but don’t qualify for transitional protection.

But it is the next stage of ‘managed migration’ – whereby claimants’ legacy benefits are switched off after being served with a notice by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – that is the most controversial. The Budget announced that the pilot phase would start in July, followed by a gradual roll-out from January 2020 to the end of 2023. The regulations setting out the process were due to come into force this month but following negative media coverage the new Secretary of State Amber Rudd announced that full managed migration wouldn’t start until the pilot phase is near completion in November. Many have taken this to mean that managed migration has been postponed. But the government hasn’t ruled out the full programme starting in January next year as originally announced. A delay would be something of a double-edged sword in any case, because those that ‘managed’ migrated are entitled to transitional protection – so a delay just means more people will ‘naturally’ migrate without protection.

A new gateway condition preventing the migration of claimants who lose out because of a severe disability premium in their legacy benefits has been put in place from 16 January. But the draft regulations also provided backdated (and ongoing) compensation for those who lost their severe disability before then when they migrated naturally. It now looks like this group won’t get their compensation unless and until the new regulations are approved, with the result that some may lose it altogether.

Minor changes were made to the two-child limit. Families who qualified for an award for three or more children before the two-child limit was introduced were to have child elements capped from 1 February. This has been scrapped altogether, but apart from that the two-child rule, with all its absurdities and repugnant exceptions (such as the infamous ‘rape clause’) have been left in place. If anything, the reversal serves to highlight the unfair and arbitrary nature of the policy whereby a third or subsequent child born before 6 April 2017 qualifies whereas those born after do not. The announcement also failed to mention that the 15,000 families it helps are more likely to be caught by the benefit cap instead.

Ministers defended the two-child policy on the grounds that ‘parents in receipt of benefits face the same financial choices … as those … who support themselves solely through work … would not normally see their wages increase simply because of the addition of a new child’. This turns the rationale of tax credits on its head – the prevention of child poverty because wages aren’t related to family size – and besides has the rather obvious logical flaw that both tax credits and universal credit are in-work benefits.

One significant change wasn’t found in any DWP press statement: at present couples where one member is above and the other below pension age (which since December is the same for men and women) have the choice to claim pension credit or universal credit. But as from 15 May mixed-age couples can only claim universal credit and can’t get pension credit until both members are pension age. The result is that poorer households have to continue to work until both are pension age, whereas those with generous pensions have a choice.”