One in four households in England and Wales lives in council housing. In Scotland the proportion is one in two households. There are 6m local authority homes in the United Kingdom and a further half a million owned by housing associations. These are the starting point statistics for a report from the Institute of Housing.(*)
Radical changes in attitude and practice need to be undertaken by central and local government to secure the future of public sector housing, the report says.
Many of the criticisms which have been directed, especially harshly, at local authorities are unjustified and unfair, the institute believes. Evidence points to the fact that local authorities manage their properties at least as well as other landlords. There are, however, considerable shortcomings in the way that some authorities deliver services to their tenants.
The report takes issue with the prevailing government views that local authorities can no longer be trusted as landlord, and dictates that new rented housing should be provided and managed by private landlords and housing associations.
Adequate funding needs to be given to repair, improve and, where necessary, replace the current local authority and housing association stock. Evidence from new schemes which have employed a high proportion of private funding shows that they can only be provided at rents up to 40% higher than currently prevail in the traditional public sector. Many people needing rented housing will not be able to afford these new “mixed funding” tenures unless rates of housing benefit keep pace. “There is little confidence that they will.”
Local authorities should not be expected to become merely landlords of last resort for those who cannot afford anything else. “The depressing and dangerous welfare housing ghettoes of the United States should be avoided at all costs.”
The report urges local authorities to cast a “vastly more critical eye” over the performance of the housing services which they provide. They need to agree standards of service provision with their tenants and to monitor those targets against achievement. They also need to set rents at a realistic level to pay for services. Much more tenant control over the provision and management of services needs to take place. Tenants should be encouraged, trained and funded to organise themselves into groups capable of wielding considerable power and influence over decision-making on their properties. Tenants who wish to form management co-operatives should be encouraged.
Local authorities have got to develop their strategic and promotional roles in housing, the report says. Given the current political climate, they cannot rely on being able to provide much housing directly in future; indeed, their existing housing stocks may progressively pass to other managers. “In order to protect the most needy, to secure a continued supply of rented housing using private money if necessary, and to ensure good standards of management, they will need to display a degree of civic enterprise and business acumen not normally associated with local authority housing departments.”
Launching the report at the Institute of Housing’s annual conference in Brighton on June 16, president Peter Kegg said: “The new government and local authorities must take heed of the warnings in this report. If they do not, public housing will become a battleground, where the only loser is the tenant. It is time to call a truce.”
(*) Preparing for change. Institute of Housing, 9 White Lion Street, London N1 9XJ. £5.
