Pride in Place Goes to Preston for Peoples Powerhouse Convention

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The NHC will be in Preston this week for the This is the North Convention 2023.

 The NHC is delighted to be on the agenda at the Peoples Powerhouse This is the North Convention, taking place in Preston across the 29th and 30th of November. Alongside Blackpool Coastal Housing, we’ll be providing a workshop discussing the findings of the recently published Pride in Place: Views from Northern Communities. Based on workshops undertaken across the North with NHC members and their residents, the session will discuss the community view on what makes a great place to live.

Peoples Powerhouse exists to help every northerner have a voice on the decisions that affect their lives and puts the views of northerners themselves central in conversations on what the future of the North should look like. The Convention promises to bring together thought leaders, activists, and change-makers from across the North to discuss, learn, and embolden the power of citizens at a local and regional level.

With our own contribution to this vitally important discussion, Pride in Place has worked with social and private rented tenants in Benwell (Newcastle), Skipton (North Yorkshire), Moss Side (Manchester), Knowsley (Merseyside), and Blackpool (Lancashire) to understand how community power can go hand in hand with the work of local organisations like NHC members. With the final report northern communities themselves have put forward a range of recommendations, from thinking differently about how public services are accessed, how everyone can be involved in shaping neighbourhoods for the better, and identifying a range of small projects that can be championed at the local level.

At This is the North the NHC joins a stellar line up or organisations including CLES, IPPR North, Involve, and the JRF. More information can be found HERE and tickets can be accessed HERE.

Pride in Place: Views from Northern Communities can be viewed HERE.

Get retrofit ready!

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The government has opened the window for applications to Wave 2.2 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. This top-up fund will make available up to £80m in grant funding to help social housing landlords install energy efficiency measures.

If you’re thinking of applying, or are already working on energy efficiency improvements, make sure you put residents at the heart of plans with our free resources.

Heartwarming Homes, produced in partnership with PlaceShapers and Tpas England, will support you to communicate with, and engage residents in energy efficiency projects. Using input from the Behaviour Change Network, it will help you work with residents to overcome barriers to having energy efficiency work done. It’ll support you to build trust and put residents’ needs at the heart of energy efficiency improvement programmes. It includes practical advice, and provides a range of resources, such as template letters, videos, a step-by-step communication process, and a language style guide.

The Retrofit Self Assessment Checklist looks at ways to make sure your sustainability programme meets the needs of residents and communities. It includes real-life examples of how you can make the make recommendations from the award-winning Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury a reality. It can also be used to benchmark the effectiveness of your sustainability programme.

North East housing providers form partnership to help deliver more social homes across the region

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With over 40,000 North East households on the waiting list for social housing, there’s a desperate need to rapidly build more genuinely affordable homes across the region.

A group of North East based housing providers have joined forces to tackle this crisis head on and to support the Mayoral Combined Authority to deliver the social housing the region needs.

The North East Housing Partnership (NEHP), which launched this week, is made up of 17 North East social housing providers with a strong presence in the seven local authority areas covered by the new North East Mayoral Combined Authority.

NEHP partners consist of housing associations, local authorities and arms length management organisations (ALMOs).

The partners are Karbon Homes, Bernicia, believe housing, Castles & Coasts, Gentoo, Thirteen, North Star, Home Group, Livin, Durham Aged Mineworkers’ Homes Association, Tyne Housing, Johnnie Johnson Housing, South Tyneside Homes, Gateshead Council, North Tyneside Council, Northumberland County Council, and Newcastle City Council.

Paul Fiddaman, Chair of the North East Housing Partnership, said: “As a partnership, we hold onto a simple belief that a house is more than just a roof over your head. It’s something you can build a life around. The evidence is clear that good quality homes is intrinsically linked with a number of social outcomes, such as education, health and employment, and devolution presents a significant opportunity to address these disparities and build our region better.

 “With new powers and funding, managed and delivered close to local needs, we have the opportunity to take on some of the deep-seated problems that have long held us back.

“However, to make a real success of devolution, anchor institutions across the region need to get behind it, lend their enthusiasm and expertise, and align their own work and investment with that of the new combined authority. That’s what the North East Housing Partnership is all about.”

 The partnership will be focusing on four key themes: Regeneration, development and placemaking, Net zero and sustainability, Employability and social inclusion and Health, care and homelessness.

The partners will work collaboratively to deliver significant change in these working thematic areas, within which housing provides a starting point to wider social, environmental and economic outcomes, and will work closely with the newly elected mayor and the new combined authority to support with the delivery of its priorities.

John Johnson, Vice Chair of the North East Housing Partnership, said: “Through the partnership I hope to see housing providers from across the North East shift from a group of individual organisations, working in relative isolation, to a strong and unified partnership.

 “When we invest together, work together, and plan together, we can achieve economies of scale, shape supply chains, regenerate communities, decarbonise our region, create and prepare people for jobs and support longer, healthier lives. If we align ourselves in each of these areas with the new combined authority, we can achieve even more.”

 Combined, the 17 partners own and manage over 214,000 homes in the region, housing around one in six households in the new mayoral combined authority area.

The concept of the partnership mirrors that of similar partnerships in other combined authority areas, such as the Greater Manchester Housing Partnership and the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership.

Autumn Statement 2023 – NHC on-the-day briefing

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The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, today delivered his Autumn Statement amid a setting of a stuttering British economy, struggling public services, record-high levels of taxation and some of the highest levels of peacetime public borrowing and debt.  

After the Government met its target of halving the level of inflation, following its fall from a multi-decade high of 10.7% to 4.6%, many Conservative backbench MPs had been calling for any fiscal headroom available to the Chancellor to be used to cut income and inheritance taxes. The Chancellor has himself publicly agreed that tax levels are higher than he would like to see but stressed that any changes to this would need to be considered alongside maintaining sustainable public finances, supporting the UK economy back to growth, incentivizing additional business investment and not allowing inflation to tick up once again.  

Today, the Chancellor announced a series of tax cuts, which he framed as part of the Government’s long-term strategy for growing the economy and getting more people into work. Government says these will cut taxes for over 29 million working people, measures include reducing employee National Insurance contributions by 2% from 6 January 2024.  

Ahead of the statement, the Northern Housing Consortium (NHC) submitted a representation to HM Treasury, calling for the urgent uprating of Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates to ease affordability pressures in the private rental sector (PRS), the release of remaining Social Housing Decarbonisation Funds (SHDF) alongside a long-term funding commitment of £6 billion per year for housing retrofit, and additional funds for local authorities to effectively monitor and enforce compliance with the Decent Homes Standard when it is applied to the PRS for the first time.  

Northern Housing Consortium CEO, Tracy Harrison, also met the Housing Minister before the Autumn Statement to once again call on the Government to uprate the LHA as a matter of urgency. 

The Chancellor’s announcement that he intends to unfreeze LHA and uprate the benefit to the 30th centile in April will therefore be welcome news for renters and councils across the North.  

This NHC on-the day briefing summarises this, and other relevant announcements. If you would like to discuss any of the details in the Autumn Statement, please contact the NHC’s Joanne Wilson (Head of Policy) at joanne.wilson@northern-consortium.org.uk 

 Read the full briefing here.

Pride in Place: views from Northern communities

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‘Pride in Place: views from Northern communities’ explores views of residents on what contributes to feelings of pride in their local area and the role NHC members could play in boosting pride in place.

Fostering pride and belonging in local areas is a source of community cohesion and social capital and will play a key role in reducing local and regional inequality across the UK. Research commissioned by the Northern Housing Consortium enabled residents in locations across the North of England to discuss life in their local area. Residents highlighted a wide range of specific factors which contribute to feelings of pride in their local area.

These are:

  • Access to basic services
  • Sense of community and decision-making
  • State of the local environment

The research highlights key challenges such as: the fragmentation of services, a lack of capacity across public services and a lack of visibility of housing and other service providers to residents. These challenges can be overcome with specific action from housing providers, local councils and national government by: encouraging devolution of power to a regional or local level, rebuilding local capacity and supporting innovative engagement and creating community hubs.

This research will play a key role in the NHC’s influencing activities over the next 12 months providing a robust evidence-base for the NHC to present to Government and opposition parties. NHC members will find this a useful insight for their activities within their communities.

Read the Report and Executive Summary here.

King’s Speech 2023 – NHC on-the-day update

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Charles III today delivered his first King’s Speech as Monarch, and the first King’s Speech for over 70 years, at the 2023 State Opening of Parliament.

The King’s Speech sets out the Government’s legislative programme for the forthcoming parliamentary session, and as such indicates the Government’s future priorities. It is expected that this will be the final King’s Speech before the next general election, which must take place at some point before 28th January 2025.

Press coverage prior to the Speech anticipated that the Government would focus on new legislation in areas such as criminal justice and new oil and gas licensing, while some legislation such as the Renters Reform Bill and Leasehold reform would be carried over from the previous parliamentary session.

These predictions were mostly accurate, with the Government briefing that criminal justice was ‘at the heart’ of the King’s Speech with no less than five Bills. Legislation of particular interest to NHC members includes a Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill and the continuation of the Renters Reform Bill.

Proposals were also trailed over the weekend by Suella Braverman to restrict the use of tents by rough sleepers, deemed a “lifestyle choice” by the Home Secretary. These proposals did not, however, make it into the final Speech.

Commenting, NHC Chief Executive Tracy Harrison said:

Further detail on relevant legislation included in the King’s Speech can be found below. An Autumn Statement is due on November 22nd, at which Government will set out its fiscal priorities.

Renters Reform Bill                                                                  

The King pledged that his Government would ensure that “renters will benefit from stronger security of tenure and better value, while landlords will benefit from reforms to provide certainty that they can regain their properties when needed”. The Government will therefore carry the Renters Reform Bill, which recently received a second reading in the House of Commons, forward into the new parliamentary session.

A full guide to the Renters Reform Bill and the policies within it can be found here, but the key aims are:

  • To abolish Section 21 or ‘No Fault’ evictions, ceasing the use of fixed-term tenancies and moving to a system where all assured tenancies are periodic.
  • More comprehensive grounds for landlords to take possession of their property e.g. repeated rent arrears and Anti-Social Behaviour.
  • Stronger protections for tenants against ‘backdoor’ evictions such as above-market rent increases.
  • The establishment of a PRS Ombudsman to provide fair, impartial and binding resolutions on issues and complaints between private tenants and landlords.
  • Creating a Privately Rented Property Portal where all privately let homes will need to be registered.
  • Giving tenants the right to request a pet in their privately rented property.

 

In addition, amendments will be brought forward “at the earliest opportunity” to increase local authority enforcement powers against rogue landlords and to make it illegal for landlords to blanketly refuse to rent their property to tenants in receipt of benefits or with children.

Housing Secretary Michael Gove has recently confirmed that the abolition of Section 21 ‘No Fault’ evictions will not take place until after the successful implementation of reforms to the nation’s courts. It is expected that Section 21 evictions will therefore not be abolished before the next general election.

The Government also confirmed that they will not be taking forward proposals to establish EPC C energy efficiency requirements in the private rental sector. This U-turn was previously announced as part of Rishi Sunak’s ‘New Approach to Net Zero’.

There is currently an open call for written evidence for anybody in the sector who wishes to share their views on the Renters Reform Bill. Members can submit evidence here.

 

Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill

The Bill will deliver the Government’s manifesto commitments on leasehold reform to establish “fairness in the housing market”.  The reforms will mean that all newly built homes must be sold as freehold, though new flats can still be leasehold.

The Bill will include provisions to:

  • Make buying or selling a leasehold property quicker and easier.
  • Ban the creation of new leasehold houses.
  • Require transparency over leaseholders’ service charges.
  • Increase the standard lease extension term from 90 years to 990 years for both houses and flats, with ground rent reduced to £0.
  • Build on the legislation brought forward by the Building Safety Act 2022, ensuring freeholders and developers are unable to escape their liabilities to fund building remediation work.

 

There will be a consultation on capping existing ground rents. Subject to that consultation, the Government will look to introduce a cap through this Bill.

The Bill tackles some existing problems such as making it cheaper and easier for more leaseholders to extend their lease, buy their freehold, and take over management of their building. Many might consider the proposals address only a few of the injustices of the leasehold system.

The Law Commission review which finished three years ago was a full review of the law with wide recommendations. Former Shadow Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Lisa Nandy had stated that a Labour government would, within 100 days of taking power, implement the law commission proposals.

The Bill is a positive reform but many will consider there is a risk of a two-tier leasehold market as the phasing-out of leasehold for some properties leaves existing leasehold properties even less desirable for those selling their homes or re-mortgaging.

The legislation governing leasehold tenure has developed in an ad hoc way and has been subject to a good deal of amendment. The Law Commission had been tasked with simplifying and consolidating existing legislation into a single Act. It will be unclear whether this proposal achieves such a consolidation until the legislation emerges.

 

Keeping people safe

The Government says “Anti-social behaviour isn’t inevitable, and it isn’t a minor crime. It makes life miserable for so many and it can be a gateway to more extreme crimes.”

Two immediate bans were highlighted:

  • Nitrous Oxide: possession will be illegal from tomorrow (08/11/23).
  • XL Bully Dogs: under the Dangerous Dogs Act by the end of the year.

 

The Government will introduce a Criminal Justice Bill to reform the criminal justice system and give police new powers including:

  • Increasing the multi-agency management requirements on offenders convicted of coercive or controlling behaviour.
  • Introducing a mandatory duty on those who work with children to report concerns relating to Child Sexual Abuse.
  • Addressing the crimes and anti-social behaviour that blight communities by:
    • taking tougher action on drugs through an expansion of drug testing on arrest.
    • increasing the maximum penalty for sale of dangerous weapons to under 18s.
    • creating a criminal offence of possession of a bladed article with the intent to cause harm.
    • tackling ‘persistent, nuisance, and organised begging’.

 

The speech also announced a Sentencing Bill to “ensure tougher sentences for the most serious offenders and increase the confidence of victims.” It will move to reform short sentences to help with rehabilitation and reduce reoffending – using suspended and community sentences, where they are more effective than short custodial sentences.

The Government will also introduce a Victims and Prisoners Bill, to give “ministers the power to stop the parole of the worst offenders”.

 

Levelling Up/Support for Towns

The Prime Minister set out in his introduction to the King’s Speech his desire to reinforce people’s ‘pride in the places they call home’. The Speech promised ‘a long-term plan to regenerate towns and put local people in control of their future’, however promised legislation is limited to a Bill relating to Football Governance and another on the use of Pedicabs in London.

Of course, the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill received Royal Assent on 26 October 2023, bringing in new laws to speed up the planning system, hold developers to account and enable the building of new homes. According to the Government, the bill forms the core of their long term commitment to levelling up, including new development for local areas and investment in local infrastructure, including giving councils new powers to improve high streets. You can read more on DLUHCs plans on this here.

 

Welfare Reform

The Government did not include a specific welfare bill in the King’s Speech, but it did assert that proposals will be published to reform welfare and support more people into work.

 

The King’s Speech also restated the Government’s existing commitments to:

  • reform electricity grid connections.
  • deliver a ‘Network North’ programme of local and regional transport links.

 

Look out for an NHC on the day briefing on the 22nd November, when the Chancellor will set out his public spending plans in the Autumn Statement. We’ll provide a comprehensive update of all the relevant details for the housing sector announced in the Statement. 

 

 

NHC Chief Executive Tracy Harrison met with the Housing Minister Rachel Maclean MP last week in Westminster. 

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Tracy talked the Minister through the emerging findings of the NHC’s Pride in Place research, and discussed our Autumn Statement representation and levelling-up priorities.

Tracy said:

“I was delighted to meet with the Minister.  Our discussion covered the findings of the NHC’s Pride in Place research, and our Autumn Statement asks, including the need to uprate local housing allowance to avoid growing pressure on homelessness services in the North.  As ever, the Minister constructively engaged with our case, and I was pleased to hear her reflect on the breadth of the role NHC members play in communities across the North.  Following a busy party conference season, it was good to look ahead to the Autumn Statement and Kings’ Speech.”

Members can look forward to on-the-day briefings from the NHC on the contents of the Kings’ Speech on 7th November, and the Autumn Statement on 22nd November.

Brownfield funding member news  

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On 9th October, the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) announced £60 million of funding to support the construction of 6,000 new homes through the second phase of the £180m Brownfield Release Fund.  

The £60 million made available will support around 100 regeneration schemes, with the North of England being allocated approximately £23 million. Local authorities in the North West will receive over £15 million, while there will be £5.2 million for the North East and £2.4 million for authorities in Yorkshire & Humber.  

Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council will receive approximately £3.2 million, the largest single allocation in the North, and the third largest of all authorities who received funds.   

Money from the Brownfield Release Fund can be used to bring brownfield land, including derelict car parks, industrial sites and town centre buildings, back into productive use and ready for new housebuilding schemes.  

A full breakdown of how the £23 million awarded to Northern local authorities will be allocated can be found in the table below:  

Area   Funding allocation   
North West   £15,460,984 
Burnley Borough Council   £416,312 
Bury   £1,731,015 
Lancaster Council   £1,439,016 
Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council   £3,151,226 
Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council   £425,951 
Salford City Council   £3,000,000 
Trafford City Council   £1,930,000 
Wigan Council   £1,042,464 
Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council   £2,325,000 
   
North East   £5,216,116 
Darlington Borough Council   £262,450 
Newcastle upon Tyne City Council   £1,819,123 
Sunderland City Council   £3,134,543 
   
Yorkshire and Humber   £2,375,790 
Kingston upon Hull City Council   £980,000 
Kirklees Council   £210,100 
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council   £431,746 
Sheffield City Council   £753,944 
   
Total   £23,052,890 

 

The Housing Ombudsman Annual Complaints Review

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The Housing Ombudsman has released its Annual Complaints Review for 2022-23, providing key insights into the social housing complaints landscape. The review reveals a sharp increase of severe maladministration findings, with individual performance reports published for 163 landlords where the Ombudsman made most findings. The report highlights that social housing complaints have seen a huge spike due to poor property conditions, legislative changes, media attention, and the inquest into the death of Awaab Ishak.

The Annual Complaints Review provides a comprehensive assessment of complaints in social housing, including that the Ombudsman received over 5,000 complaints for the first time last year, a 28% increase on the previous year. The report also shows that more than half of the findings were upheld for the first time, with an increase in maladministration findings where service requests were not handled reasonably.

In many of these cases, landlords are making the same mistakes over and over again. This shows that with just a little bit of sharp focus on the important issues the Ombudsman highlights, the sector can get to grips with the problem.

The Ombudsman has again written to Chief Executives of landlords who have a maladministration rate of over 50% to bring urgent attention to the figures. However, this year the Ombudsman is also writing to five landlords who had no findings upheld, recognising their positive complaint handling approach. The review also looks at Complaint Handling Failure Orders (CHFOs) and key issues for the first time, with the Ombudsman issuing 146 CHFOs last year.

The Annual Complaints Review provides key insights and information into the performance of landlords managing complaints. Alongside this publication the Ombudsman are also hosting training and events to keep up to date with the latest policies and best practice.

Read the full review here

Read the resident-facing review here.

To access the Housing Ombudsman Training and Events click here

NHC submits Autumn Statement representation to HM Treasury 

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On the 13th October, the NHC submitted its Autumn Statement representation to HM Treasury, laying out our relevant key asks to support the North’s housing sector.  

On 22nd November, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will make what may be his final Autumn Statement before the next general election. As a result, much of the media focus is on whether the Chancellor will announce any new tax cuts or spending to win over prospective voters.  

The NHC’s representation focuses on:  

  1. Alleviating private rental sector affordability pressures by restoring the Local Housing Allowance so it once again covers the 30th percentile of local rents  
  2.  Providing funding certainty for housing providers so they can effectively plan energy efficiency improvements, through releasing the remaining unallocated funds from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund and making a long-term funding commitment for housing retrofit  
  3.  Ensuring that local authorities have the capacity in their housing teams to effectively monitor and enforce compliance with the Decent Homes Standard, especially as it is applied to the Private Rental Sector for the first time  

 

Increasing affordability for those on low incomes renting in the private rental sector  

Since 2019/20, rents in the private rental sector have increased by 15% in Yorkshire & Humber, 12% in the North West and 10% in the North East, while Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates have been frozen since 2020.  

The result of this is that for those on low incomes, private renting is becoming increasingly unaffordable. We now find ourselves in a situation where only 7% of two-bedroomed properties let in the North of England are affordable for people reliant on the LHA. In the North West, this figure is even lower at 4.9%.  

This is leading to increased private sector evictions, and ever-greater pressure on local authorities, who are seeing more households requesting homelessness support and are having to spend record amounts of money on expensive temporary accommodation.  

We believe the government can play a significant role in alleviating these affordability pressures for private tenants on low incomes, by restoring Local Housing Allowance so it once again covers the 30th percentile of local rents, and re-link the LHA to the real cost of renting a home for future years. 

 

Funds for Decarbonising Social Housing  

In 2020, the government announced the £3.8bn Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, to support housing providers to make energy efficiency improvements to their homes. So far, around £1.1 billion of funds have been made available to housing providers in four waves (including the most recent £80m for Wave 2.2). 

More needs to be done, however, to accelerate the decarbonisation of our housing stock. There are currently around 3.6 million homes across the North in need of retrofit. The competitive, short-term nature of existing funding streams means that housing providers cannot effectively plan their long-term investments in housing retrofit as efficiently and effectively as they could if there were a clearer idea of what government funding support will be available over the long-term. This means that our energy efficiency drive is slower than it could be, and that supply chains cannot effectively scale up to meet predictable, increasing demand. 

Further clarity for the sector could be provided at the Autumn Statement, if government were to release the money that remains unallocated from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF), or by laying out how subsequent SHDF waves will allocate any remaining funds, allowing housing providers to plan their investments with confidence of continued government support.  

Beyond this, a long-term energy efficiency funding commitment of £6bn per year across all housing tenures would provide the certainty required for housing providers and supply chains to scale up plans and operations in housing retrofit.  

   

Decent Homes Enforcement 

As part of the government’s ongoing work to improve housing quality in the Private Rental Sector (PRS), the Decent Homes Standard (DHS) will, at some future point, be applied to the PRS for the first time.  

While the introductory of a minimum standard is welcome, if the DHS is to be successfully applied, this will be a significant increase in the workload of local authority housing teams as they assess homes, and where necessary take enforcement action, against the Standard.  

Recent data from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities showed that the most common local authority enforcement team size is between two and five Full Time Equivalent (FTE) staff – with 26 local authorities currently having between zero and one FTE staff working on housing enforcement.  

It is critical that funds are made available to local authorities, so that they have the capacity and expertise within their workforces to meet the increased demands of effectively assessing and enforcing the Decent Homes Standard in the private rental sector.   

 

The NHC’s representation can be found, in full, here. A comprehensive summary of the Autumn Statement and any housing-related announcements will be available to NHC members shortly after the Statement on 22nd November.