Inside Housing have been at the international housing conference in Cannes.

Here is a list of their observations:

“1. There are more local authorities at MIPIM than ever before

Schmoozing developers on what looks like a taxpayer funded jolly is, of course, an awkward look for councils to wear. But increasingly the braver ones are taking the plunge. Ealing, Haringey, Hounslow and some of London’s outer boroughs are here alongside the big regional cities – Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Coventry, Newcastle, Liverpool, Stoke, Bolton and Nottingham. Indeed, Nottingham told Inside Housing that a joint venture with investor Igloo was a direct result of conversations held at MIPIM.

2. The private rented sector is so hot right now

Everyone wants a slice of the PRS pie – perhaps in part because some believe the commercial property market’s bull run is coming to an end so are looking to residential investment instead. Pension funds are competing for access to schemes. Yesterday, the British Property Federation called on the London mayoral candidates to take “bold action” with Build to Rent by setting aside a quarter of public land for PRS schemes.

3. Market rent looks like being the name of the game among regional local authorities

A couple of cities are referencing plans to scale up their direct construction of private rented sector accommodation. Drinks with potential funders are likely to flow and, hopefully, grease the wheels of these ambitious plans.

4. Building offsite is taking off in a major way

After years of talk, since Inside Housing revealed that L&G is building an offsite construction factory, the rest of the industry has gone mad for it. One architect said that in the last week alone, he had received four separate enquiries about designing offsite homes.

5. Housing matters, but affordability doesn’t register quite as much

In a debate about the priorities for the next mayor, keeping supply up in London dominated minds, but house and rent prices were notable only by their absence – in a stark contrast to this debate in most other forums. The only reference came from Tony Pidgley, chair of house builder the Berkeley Group, who railed against Sadiq Khan’s 50% tariff for affordable housing.

6. The ‘house’ in Northern Powerhouse is less significant than you might think

One of the highlights of the programme was a debate on the drive, but while transport, health, technology and shipping took a front seat, housing was a fringe issue. The only real mention was the opportunity created for the area as priced-out graduates flee the South East.

7. Brexit is weighing on the minds of property developers

A question on Brexit has cropped up at virtually every session of the day. Indeed London mayor Boris Johnson, who normally attends, is notable by his absence. The consensus: uncertainty will breed a slow-down in deals and development, and this will only get worse in the period that would follow a victory for ‘leave’. Cannes votes ‘in’.

8. Foreign investment in London’s housing market is a thorny issue

Developers need it to enable future phases of schemes, but politically this sits uncomfortably. Sir Edward Lister, deputy mayor for policy and planning at the Greater London Authority, was at pains to emphasise there are not lots of vacant homes owned by foreign investors in London… Given that most of those on the London stand had come to France in order to market their schemes to foreign investors, this seemed a bit odd.

9. There are some elephants in the room

The prime residential central London market is looking increasingly shaky, with investment bank Morgan Stanley recently warning of price falls of up to 20%. No one dare chat about this with the many major luxury developers that are out in force marketing their schemes. Similarly Capco, which is exhibiting its Earls Court scheme, will be praying that Sadiq Khan doesn’t win the mayoral election after he pledged to review the development if elected.

10. Brandon Lewis is expected to pay a visit to Cannes

The housing minister is understood to be heading to MIPIM on Thursday to do his bit in attracting investment in badly-needed housing. This doesn’t appear to be particularly publicised.“

Many housing associations are relying on ‘temporary understandings’ with lenders to prevent new accountancy rules leading to re-pricing.

Housing associations will publish year-end accounts over the coming months, which have been drawn up under Financial Reporting Standard (FRS) 102 for the first time.

According to Inside Housing:

“These new rules threaten to create volatility in reported surpluses, which could cause housing associations to breach the terms of existing lending agreements, potentially leading to re-pricing.

As a result, the National Housing Federation (NHF) had warned members to seek agreements before the year end to renegotiate covenants in accordance with the new rules.

However, it believes landlords which have managed to do so “are not in the majority”, leaving others reliant on less formal mechanisms.

Housing associations are using methods including cash covenants, which look at the cash value of transactions and balances, and are not affected by accounting changes, frozen GAAP covenants, which flex current loan covenant agreements to approximate the new changes, or temporary understandings with lenders.”

The National Housing Federation (NHF) has opened talks with government as it seeks to deal with the looming “regulatory burden” posed by the charity watchdog’s rules.

The NHF is speaking to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) and the Charity Commission itself about the nature of its role when the Housing and Planning Bill comes into force.

The bill, currently going through parliament, will remove the requirement for associations to obtain consent from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) to dispose of stock, but HAs registered with the Charity Commission will be required instead to obtain consent from the body.

This is because they will no longer benefit from an exemption under the Charities Act 2011 which excludes organisations already required to obtain consent from another statutory body.

The Federation is concerned that this has the potential to increase the regulatory burden on affected organisations, delay the implementation of active asset management strategies, and overwhelm the resources available to the Charity Commission. It is seeking a solution that would protect charitable assets while also ensuring all HAs benefit from deregulation.

A government amendment to the bill tabled this week states that ministers will demand a sum from a local authority based upon the value of their vacant “higher”-value stock. This, if passed by parliament, will replace a phrase in the bill which says this sum is based on the value of “high”-value stock.

The change in wording is a more subjective measure of which council homes should be sold off. It therefore could increase the quantity of council homes sold off.

The current version of the bill allows the secretary of state to define ‘high-value’ in regulations. An government amendment tabled this week explicitly states the government will be able to “use any category of housing that the secretary of state considers appropriate as a comparator (for example, housing in which a local housing authority has an interest or housing in a particular area)”.

The amendment contrasts to a Conservative Party document before the general election, which stated: “Local authority properties that rank among the most expensive third of all properties of that type in their area – including private housing – will be sold off.”

and Mp has accused BT of “shameless profiteering” after official figures indicated that the telecommunications giant has generated more than £1m from a phone line designed to help people struggling with the new universal credit system.

Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said it is wrong to charge some of the poorest people in Britain who are simply seeking advice about the new universal credit which integrates six benefits.

In a parliamentary written answer last week the employment minister Priti Patel said that 2.2m calls have been answered by universal credit agents manning an 0345 helpline. Farron estimates that this has generated a minimum of £1.49m for BT – and possibly as much as £6.6m – because Patel said in her written answer that each call lasts an average of 7mins 29 secs.

0345  numbersfrom landlines cost up to 12p a minute and up to 45p a minute from mobiles.

Older and disabled people could be disproportionately affected by plans to force councils in England to sell high-value social housing, campaigners say.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation said the policy was likely to lead to a widespread sell-off of bungalows, which are often popular among the elderly.

According to JRF:

“It said 15,300 council-owned bungalows in England could be sold off by 2021.

But ministers say councils can decide not to sell a property if it meets “a particular need” or is hard to replace.

The Housing and Planning Bill – which the government says will help more people become home owners – goes before the House of Lords later.

If it is passed, local authorities will be compelled to sell expensive properties as they become vacant, to “ensure that the money locked up in high value vacant housing stock will be reinvested in building new homes”.Warning over ‘bungalow sell-off plan’

According to the Bill, what will count as a “high value” property is likely to vary in different areas.

However, the foundation called on ministers to make bungalows – which it says are in high demand – and sheltered housing exempt from the initiative.

How will extending Right to Buy work?

Such a move would bring England in line with Northern Ireland, where councils are not forced to sell bungalows or ground-floor flats under a similar initiative.

In the foundation’s report, researchers from Cambridge University said they found high demand for bungalows meant they were almost three times more likely to be sold off and would be harder to replace because of the amount of land needed.

It also estimated that while bungalows make up 9% of council-owned housing, they were likely to make up 25% of high-value property sales because of their higher cost and more frequent vacancies – a result of people moving into residential care or tenants moving later in life.

One in five older people currently lives in a bungalow, a proportion that increases steadily from 55-75, according to the report. This figure rises to one in four when there is someone sick or disabled in an older person’s household.

‘Acute housing crisis’

Brian Robson, from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said the housing Bill would reduce the number of affordable homes at a time of an “acute housing crisis”.

“We risk holding a great British bungalow sell-off that will make things worse for older and disabled tenants who are trying to find suitable, affordable accommodation,” he said.

“The increasing reliance on costly, insecure tenancies in the private-rented sector to house families on low incomes will only serve to trap more people in poverty.”

However, a spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said local authorities would have the power to decide not to sell a property “if it meets a particular need and would be difficult to replace”.

“Planning policy already requires local plans to take the housing needs of older and disabled people into account. Where there is a local need, councils can set much clearer standards for accessible and wheelchair-adaptable new homes,” he added. ” “

The brand new income management charter is a flexible framework unique to CIH that helps organisations to challenge their income management services and identify the outcomes a good quality service can deliver.

income_management_charter

By signing up to the CIH income management charter, you are making a public commitment to working towards a high quality approach to income management.

Has your landlord signed up?

This is the third in a series of blogposts on governance and devolution.

CfPS has been funded by the LGA to provide practical support to five areas in England which are going through the process of negotiating and agreeing devolution deals. We are exploring how accountability and governance will work in relation to matters subject to those deals.

They say:

“Devolution deals will stand and fall on the quality of the relationships between the people involved. For someone keen on formal governance, this is difficult to admit. Close relationships – “chumminess” – can be the enemy of good governance. It encourages an uncritical atmosphere, a back-slapping environment where close relationships bind a small number of people together while others sit out on the cold, unable to influence or understand decisions that might be being made in their name. Ultimately, it is a way of working that can breed corruption and failure.

This is why formal governance systems exist. The systems we have in local government are very familiar to us now, and date back well over a hundred years. Strong, independent oversight of spending in particular was seen as critical when local government was a novelty – the District Auditor played a vital (some would say overweening) role in the early years of the last century and further systems of probity and assurance were added on during the “professionalisation” of local government in the 1960s and 70s, and again during subsequent modernisation efforts in the 90s and in the last decade.

Since 2010 the trend has been to move away from this form of control and accountability. Flexibility and innovation, local partnership and relationship-building now count for more than more formal systems of governance which can be seen as bureaucratic. Nowhere is this more evident than with English devolution. Here, relationships aren’t constrained by a formal, nationally-prescribed governance framework. They are recognised as central to success. But could this be at the expense of governance, probity and transparency?

Because this is not a top down process (at least, insofar as local areas have to come together to actively bid for powers) it relies on local leaders coming together and agreeing a joint prospectus. In some areas this has proven exceptionally difficult. The productive and positive personal relationships are necessary to allow a common understanding of priorities to emerge, because such a common understanding will require compromise and reflection – impossible where people are unable to discuss frankly and candidly with people they consider to be their peers. Disagreements develop over some of the biggest sticking points – who, locally, will exercise what powers? What checks and balances will there be? Where will oversight lie? Here, good governance can provide clarity. It provides a framework for these difficult discussions and decisions.

In a couple of the areas where we are providing support, relationships between key decision-makers are being built from the ground up. There has been joint working in those areas before but nothing of the scale we are now talking. Trying to build these relationships while simultaneously having a debate about issues which will affect the lives of people in those areas for the next ten, fifteen, twenty years is to say the least challenging.

We think that a framework is necessary for those discussions. Good – and proportionate – governance can provide that framework. This needn’t be overly bureaucratic.

For example, our work in each of the five areas where we are providing support seems to be coalescing around a particular methodology. We are starting by having some one-to-one structured conversations with individuals, or very small groups. These might be executive members, senior officers, partners, non-executive members and even (!) members of the public. We are using these conversations to design larger group sessions – identifying areas of commonality, areas of disagreement, noting opportunities for further dialogue. We hope that this will lead to a constructive process.

Importantly this process is a broad one. It involves more than just the group of people who might be negotiating the deal. A process that is managed, but that admits a wide range of perspectives, some of which may clash, is we think a good way to place relationships under stress in a safe and controlled way. That way we’ll know where weaknesses lie and what action we can take, through designing governance systems, to strengthen them.

Such an approach gives everyone a stake in leadership. It gives everyone clarity about what their roles are, and will be – individually and collectively. It is built on and promotes dialogue and discussion between peers – not at the expense of good governance, but specifically in order to build governance systems which will feel proportionate and relevant. ”

When CfPS produce findings, we will reflect on this process and consider whether it has worked well. In the meantime, they are keen to hear about the experiences of other areas who have been working on these issues. If you have any insights or thoughts you’d like to share, please contact me on 020 7187 7369 or at ed.hammond@cfps.org.uk

CfPS CEO says mixed messages are being sent by government to local councils on their role in school accountability and improvement.

CfPS strongly believe that democratically elected members can have a valuable role in school improvement – explored further in  publications Back to School and Your School, Your Community,