“Government figures analysed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) today show that more social housing tenants exercised their Right to Buy in 2013/14 than the number of new social rented homes built in England and Wales.

In 2013/14, there were 11,514 Right to Buy sales and 10,920 units of additional social rented homes, the Department for Communities and Local Government figures show. In 2012/13, there were 6,114 Right to Buy sales and 17,620 additional social rented homes. In addition to social rented housing, 19,740 ‘affordable rent’ homes were built in 2013/14.

The last time there were more Right to Buy sales than new social rented homes built was in 2005/06 when there were 28,519 sales and 23,630 new social homes.”

“Last year, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) allocated £900m to fund almost 44,000 new homes across England, and the Greater London Authority (GLA) allocated £404m to fund 18,000 homes in London – largely for affordable rent.

But both organisations have now entered into negotiations with social landlords as they reappraisedevelopment ambitions under the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) following the planned four-year rent reduction and welfare reform.

It is understood GLA officials emailed housing associations in the aftermath of the Budget indicating that it would be willing to renegotiate commitments.

Landlords say they are currently engaged in negotiations over changing the tenure of schemes, while others are asking for higher levels of grant to make the economics work.

Meanwhile, an HCA spokesperson said: “We are in discussions with [landlords] who think they might need to change their development plans, for example, to bring forward more shared ownership schemes. We will work with them on any changes as we would through normal programme management.”

It comes as a multitude of landlords told Inside Housing they expect to have to deliver more market or shared ownership units as a result – although they still intend to produce homes at affordable or social rents.

Hi everyone. Thanks for supporting the meeting.

In a more packed than ever programme for which we thank EDH for hosting….

Here are the presentations and notes.

S Net slides 22nd July

New policies, regulation and the Budget – what does it mean for  involvement and what consultation might be necessary?

We discussed the Conservative election promise and the budget, new deep dive inspections and plans to share this with customers.

The budget and the new government have brought a number of orgaisatiosn to the fore to share their views on this. Here are some of them – there is more on this website:

Summer 2015 Budget Briefing

What you need to know about the summer budget 2015

We agreed a proactve approach might be necesary to show the worth of CI given the inevitable cuts due to rent reductions and deep dive inspections:

Staff could be:

• sharing information on the budget and election outcomes on houisng – housing policy discussions with customers
• being proactive on the VFM approach on consultation
• considering surveys as a consultation tool
• reviewing out of date cusotmer involvement methods and removing them whilst continuing to meet the standards
• consulting on cuts to services, to potect the services tenants appreciate and remove waste, whilst still maintaining the standards
• consulting teanants and supporting them through any merger vote where the stock is to be transfered wholly and a change in landlord is offered

On deep dive inspections, we discussed that these might come from regulatory concern on VFM and also from compliants, which might include consumer standards – and the tenant involvement standard.

We discussed some of the latest regulation which detail this some more:

2015-06-19_Regulating_the_standards

Guidance_on_Approach_to_Intervention__Enforcement_and_Powers

……………..and the latest regulatory report on judgemnts which have not gone the right way for hosuing providers:

With_the_Benefit_of_Hindsight_FINAL

We discussed the 6 week notice of the inspection and the in depth work completed in the 2 pilots at London and Quadrant and also St Vincents HA.

We are not clear yet if the depp dive inclues tenant meetings – this may depend on the reasn and focus of the deep dive.

It is not clear who will pay – the HCA still has the ability to charge the landlord for their intervention work.

Staff reported a bit more interest in invlvemnt since social value as that brought in more dividends (non cashable).

New thinking on involvement

Also part of the slides above – we discussed:

Family Mosaic report – what changes might mean for involvement

At out last meeting, we discussed the tenants leading change and the Orbit report on Success, Satisfaction and Scrutiny.

At this meeting we discussed the above report – the  role of surveys now and the move away from measuring those involved in numbers, the role of tenants getting invove dn what they are interested in in neighbourhoods, rather than formal panels and cusotmers as commuity researchers. We also discussed the work which HACT is doing to anlayse and improve STAR and the offer made by HACT to include S Net in this consultation.

Picking up on changes proposed by landlords

We discussed the inititiaves out there now, including land trusts, self build, volunteering thorugh iititives like Sunday Assembly and Uprising, use of comedians in helping discussions on local ASB, DIY and decorating skills for cusotmers, evening meetings and door knocking as the mainstay of CI Officer work and the change in neihgbourhoods for HOs with smaller patches to get closer to the cusotmer and build trust. We also observed interns getting involved in community investment work, though we did have a comment that landlords might pull back on this as they managed the rent reduction.

Asking people to volunteer and having a contract and role profile is seen as a useful way to attract involved customers and to support them into work.

Feedback surveys and STAR Surveys – changes proposed by HACT and how to get involved in the pilots

We had a long chat on the pros and cons of surveys, what they might be used for and what they might not be suited to. We shared the work of th mesurg involvement results so far on what was being measured on CI and what went to Board.

Incomunities led the way in giving information for their neighbourhood committees on activity on involvement.

Engagement conferences

Anyone wishing to volunteer a grat project for display at the CI conference – 3rd Nov  contact me

We discssed the need for leadership/chairing skills to enhance relationship management and to creaet a new working envirnment for CI

We agreed that a CI officer unconference might be best in 2016, or in December when the extent of impact of the budget was known.

We agreed to park the complaints tenant unconference – to enable it not to clash wiht the TP conference on 3rd Nov.

We agreed that in house training was expected for those new to scrutiny groups.

We agreed there was no requirement for WR training due to the odler age range of invoolved tenants.

 On the Couch

Also part of the slides above – we discussed:

Car insurance for customers

This was raised by Incommunities when a tenants chose to share transport with another tenant. Investigations revealed that the tenant claiming mileage needed business insurance and given the additional cost, there was discussion on an enhaned mileage rate.

Many staff also carrry customers to meetings. the issue was if an accident or injury occured – woudl the cusotmer claim from the other tenant or was the landlord culpable.

Data Protection – we discussed the need for confideintiality agreements for new tenants and refresher training for existing tenants. information can be shared wiht volunteers but only for the purpose of their volunteering. If names and contact details are not necesary or any other data you share – do not give it out!

If this is an area of interest – see my presentation to S.Net in Liverpool in 2013/14 on this website.

Measuring Involvement – results from the project so far –

Here are the results to date

Measuring the Real Value May 2015 Draft V7 July 20

HAT have agreed to support our project as they intend to do some work on commuity investment in the Autumn. Yvonne to discuss in more detail with HACT next week.

Any late joiners contact Yvonne immediately.

Appreciative enquiry as a tool for engaging in neighbourhoods

This is a tool which is realy useful for neighbourhood identification of issues. The tool asks teants to dream outside the box of what a good community would look like an takes a step approach – all covered in one day on how you might get there.

Give me a ring if you want to discuss this further – its something we used to use at the Audit Commission quite alot on Supporting People enquiries.

Appreciative enquiry

AOB

Appraisals by tenant chairs – this is not completed by any of the members. Incomunties do appraisals as staff on all tenants, they have no chairs. – the forms from this and from Habinteg are on this site from the last meeting in Bury in April 2015.

Our Forthcoming Training with discounts for members – see website

• Latest training offers on leadership and Unconferences – Sept to Dec – pick and mix
• Complaint Panels conference – 2016
• Staff unconference 2015/16 _Dec or Jan?

Future topics, speakers and venues

We agreed we needed more time for discussion at the next meeting.

• Wednesday 14^th October – Habinteg – this venue might change as the new building may not be ready – so we might need to move matters back a month or two. Watch this space.
• Wednesday 27^th January 2016  – Magenta

Dawn Foster of the guardian on line has taken a really good look at what this means for britain

Here is her analysis – ” Analysis by the Guardian this week upends that myth, showing that housing is more than just a problem of home ownership and extends wider than the south-east.”

This is what she says:

“At the moment, only certain parts of London are unaffordable to a two-child family receiving benefits in a two-bedroom flat. However, after the benefit cap is reduced to £20,000 (£23,000 in London), the same family will find half of England is off limits.

The rhetoric driving the cap – that too many families live gleefully on handouts – overlooks the fact that the housing benefit bill is high because wages are low, and more and more families are being pushed out of social housing and into expensive privately rented accommodation. The people profiting from housing benefit aren’t poor tenants but their landlords.

With rents continuing to rise, there’s no incentive for landlords to reduce rents in line with the benefit cap. They will simply rent to anyone who will pay the asking price. Adverts stipulating that flats aren’t available to those on benefits are no longer uncommon. Once the reduced cap is in place they will likely be as commonplace as “No DSS” signs once were.

Already, politicians and campaigners are warning of social cleansing as councils ship single mothers and poor families out to far-flung boroughs where they have no social network and connection. If the cap leads to a mass exodus from the south of England, it will look more like the Highland clearances than a coherent housing strategy.

The argument that those who can’t afford to live in a city should be forced out misunderstands how cities function. Rather than being citadels of wealth, thriving cities are for everyone: cleaners, nurses, teachers, people on low and high wages. If the poor are forced out of the south, you won’t walk into a Starbucks in Oxford to find an oligarch serving you an espresso, or a hedge fund manager taking your blood pressure on a hospital ward.

Deliberately engineering a situation where the poor are forced to leave their homes and travel hundreds of miles will lead to the ghettoisation of half the country, where the rich flock to London and the south-east, and the poor are sequestered in the north.

Some families will move, but there’s also another likely outcome for a lot of households. Travel around the country and people affected by cuts will tell you that often the only bill they can save on is food. More than a million trips to food banks were made last year and that number is set to increase. The supreme court already ruled that the earlier £26,000 benefit cap breached the UK’s international obligations on children’s rights – a lower cap will affect 330,000 more children.

To lower the housing benefit bill, the government could make work pay rather than implementing a living wage that isn’t enough to live on. Instead, thousands of families will face an exodus or destitution, and unscrupulous private landlords and low-paying businesses will continue to be subsidised through the back door.”

The CIH issued the warning this week as it continues to assess the impact of George Osborne’s scrapping of the 10-year inflation-linked rent settlement announced in the Budget.

Accordng to Inside Housing:

“Many councils, particularly those close to reaching their housing revenue account borrowing caps, were relying on expected increases in rental income to fund one-for-one replacements for homes sold off under the current Right to Buy policy.

Under Right to Buy, councils can use sales receipts to fund 30% of the cost of replacing a home and have to find the remaining 70% themselves. If they do not replace the home within three years the council has to repay the money back to the Treasury with interest.

Simon Smith, director of financial consultancy at CIH, said the problem would particularly affect councils in London, which are more likely to have built up one-for-one replacement cash pots due to larger property values.

Instead of being able to increase rents by the CPI measure of inflation plus 1%, social landlords will have to cut rents by 1% annually for each of the next four years from next April.

Khevyn Limbajee, cabinet member for housing at Labour-led London authority Waltham Forest Council, said the rent reduction will lead to £22m of lost income over four years. Mr Limbajee said he thinks many councils will now look to transfer their Right to Buy receipts to housing associations.

Inside Housing reported the findings of CIH research last week showing that the rent changes would lead to councils losing £42bn over 30 years.

The government has pledged to replace every Right to Buy home it considers would not have been sold had RTB discounts not increased in 2012.  The Department for Communities and Local Government said in June that of 19,445 additional homes sold, 3,337 homes have been started.”

In a seperate article, on Councils and ALMOs

Analysis produced by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) for Inside Housing last week said the flat 1% reduction would cost £2.6bn over four years.

Yesterday, the LGA released its own analysis, which suggested the cut would leave councils with £1.1bn less than planned from rents in 2019/20.

The cost to councils will rise from £234m in year one, to £508m in year two and £795m in year three, making a combined £2.6bn over the four years, the analysis said.

By 2019/20 the annual funding gap will represent 60% of local government’s total housing maintenance budget. Over the four years, the total £2.6bn will be equivalent to the cost of building almost 19,000 new homes, the LGA said.

The CIH projections, estimated over the 30-year life of business plans, revealed a total £42bn black hole as a result of the change.

The rent changes tore up an existing formula, which said rents would rise at inflation plus 1% over 10 years – instead reducing rents by 1% for four years.”

“Government sources have told Inside Housing that the policy, which comes into effect in April 2017, is ‘likely’ to contain a taper. This means social tenants earning just above the £30,000 threshold (£40,000 in London) may not immediately have to pay market or near market rent.

Instead, rent will be gradually increased as household income rises further above the threshold.

The revelation will come as a minor relief to some social tenants, who were facing a dramatic hike in rents due to the policy. Rod Cahill, chief executive of Catalyst, said: ‘In high rent areas there is going to have to be some tapering, because it is not practical for [tenants] to pay full market rent.’

However, Michael Gelling, chair of the Tenants’ and Residents’ Organisation of England, dismissed suggestions that the taper would mitigate the impact. ‘[The policy] says, “if you’ve got a bit more money, we’re going to screw you for a bit more”,’ he said.

George Osborne announced earlier this month that higher-earning social tenants would have to pay market or near market rent in order to stay in their homes. ‘It’s not fair that families earning over £40,000 in London, or £30,000 elsewhere, should have their rents subsidised by other working people,’ he said.

Councils will have to pay the extra money raised to the Treasury while housing associations will be able to keep it. If household income falls below the thresholds, rents will decrease.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is not at this stage revealing any detail about the policy.”

“Julian Ashby, chair of the Homes and Communities Agency’s (HCA) regulation committee, yesterday wrote to all chief executives and chairs of the 255 English housing associations owning 1,000 homes or more.

The letter calls for providers to submit a fresh Financial Forecast Return (FFR) by no later than noon on 30 October. Housing associations submitted their original FFRs, which include forecasts of expenditure and income, by a deadline of 30 June.

In the letter, Mr Ashby says the Conservative government’s decision to reduce social housing rents by 1% annually for four years, combined with welfare reforms such as the lowering of the benefit cap, will ‘have a substantial impact on most associations’ business plans.’

The HCA is now asking organisations to submit new FFRs. The HCA wants to be assured that associations:

• understand the scale of the changes
• have the ‘remedial plans’ they need in order to be able to carry on trading through the changes
• have considered ‘all relevant issues’, including the impact on cash flow, covenant compliance, security and re-financing
• understand which actions are under the organisation’s control
• have carried out ‘stress-testing’ of their business plans

Mr Ashby warns that failure to provide accurate FFR returns ‘will give rise to cause for regulatory concern’.

He said: ‘It is for you to decide whether and how you will need to reconfigure your business in the light of these changes.

‘We anticipate that most associations will wish to look at their cost structure and consider areas where it is possible to re-prioritise expenditure.’

Foreword, Alan Milburn and Stephen Dorrell

The NHS faces a challenge over the next decade of meeting growing and more complex demand within tight financial constraints. There are already many examples of doctors, nurses, managers, community workers and patients trying out innovative models of care that show how this challenge can be met. The task for policymakers is to ensure that we have a healthcare system that supports these empowering models and enables them to spread.

Attempts to empower patients so far have focused on making acute services like hospitals more responsive, but we now need to give people greater control over their own health in their homes and communities, long before acute care is required, or in recovery after hospitalisation.

This report reviews many of the promising, empowering models of care that are already being tried out all around the UK, such as:

• social prescribing models, which address people’s social, emotional and practical, as well as medical needs
• brokerage and integration models, which mean that services are joined up around the person rather than people having to navigate fragmented services
• peer support models, which mobilise the knowledge, skills and empathy of people with similar conditions
• asset-based community development models, which focus on strengthening people’s capabilities so they are less dependent on services and can lead independent lives
• technology-enabled care plans, which provide people with the tools and data needed to better manage their condition themselves.

Nevertheless these models are at the margins of the system. What can we do to help them spread? We argue that five steps need to be taken:

1. We need to change the way money flows around the NHS. We recommend that £4 billion of the new money the government will invest in the NHS over this parliament goes into a transformation fund to invest in new models of care and drive change in the healthcare model provided throughout the country. We recommend that money is put directly in people’s hands by accelerating the spread of personal health budgets, which should be an entitlement for all those with long-term conditions by 2020. More widely, local commissioners should provide funding for integrated healthcare providers based on capitated and outcomes-based funding.
2. The government should embrace and take further the ‘devo-health’ agenda. Power needs to be devolved down to local areas and to frontline professionals so that they are better able to redesign services around people’s needs.
3. This agenda requires a profound change in clinical and healthcare cultures and mindsets. We need to equip the healthcare workforce with the roles and skills required to provide these new models of care, as well as moving to a coproductive culture in which decision-making is genuinely shared between patients and healthcare professionals.
4. Technology is key to putting more power, especially data, in citizen’s hands, which will enable them to know more about their own health and act more effectively themselves to stay healthy and well. But the NHS is very poor at adopting and diffusing new technologies. We call for a better adoption and diffusion mechanism for technologies, such that it is easier to sell products into the NHS and such that the NHS itself is demanding innovation.
5. Empowerment is not just something that is given by the system:citizens themselves also need to play a role. While the government, employers and communities have a duty to act upon the social determinants of ill health, we all have a responsibility to live healthily. This should be incentivised in the tax system, such as by increasing taxes on some high-strength alcoholic drinks. A more active role for citizens should be promoted by helping them to be more involved in and prepared for care planning; by actively seeking to achieve the goals agreed; by sharing their health data with professionals from different service organisations; by getting involved in the community and by helping others; and by purchasing and utilising new technologies.”

“The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has today published a report, which finds that changes to theplanning system have made it more difficult for planning agreements to ensure homes are built for those on the lowest incomes.

The charity argues that the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), introduced by the coalition government, has led to negative impacts, including a greater emphasis on viability assessments, giving developers more ability to renegotiate agreements if they can show they make the scheme unworkable.

JRF is calling for the introduction of viability assessment guidelines, which would set parameters forbuilding costs and land values and allow councils to extract an amount from the rise in land value resulting from the granting of planning permission.

It is also calling for the NPPF definition of affordability to be changed so it is aligned with households’ ability to pay.”

Moody’s moved the outlook for the sector from stable to negative, which indicates a likely downward direction for the ratings in the medium term.

The agency has previously warned that the budget changes were ‘credit negative’ and risked stripping £2.1bn out of housing association balance sheets over four years.

In a comment published today, Moody’s said: ‘The cumulative impact of recent changes in governmentpolicy have created a more difficult environment for housing associations.

‘These changes reached a tipping point with the announcement of  an annual 1% in reduction in social housing rent… as part of the UK Summer Budget.’

It said that this change, combined with welfare reforms and ‘less predictable’ proposals such as Pay to Stay and Right to Buy create ‘more demanding circumstances’ for housing associations.

The note warned the overall credit profile of the sector could deteriorate if associations are unable to maintain current projected business plans.

It warned property sales could begin to make up a higher share of income, with the percentage raised fromsocial housing revenue declining from 76% in 2014 to 67% in 2017.

Moody’s also said operating margins could decrease from 30% to 26% by 2019 as cost increases exceed revenue growth.

The agency provides ratings to 44 landlords and its opinions are key in allowing landllords to secure cheap debt from lenders.

Moody’s previously issued a negative outlook for housing associations in 2012, before issuing a mass downgrade a year later citing a ‘weaker regulatory framework’.

Today’s announcement does not affect individual credit ratings.