CWAG

CWAG consultation response – How to implement social rent convergence

CWAG and the NFA have submitted a joint response to the government’s consultation on how to achieve rental convergence. Our response supports the proposal for a £2 per week additional rent increase that will achieve convergence for most landlords within the 10-year timeframe of the current rental settlement. The consultation response was supported by analysis from Savills which modelled the impact of different convergence scenarios on HRAs at a national level.

The response highlights that although extremely welcome, the long-term rent settlement and convergence will not fund everything that the government wants to see the sector deliver and additional resources will be required for new development and any new requirements arising from the proposals in respect of changes to the Decent Homes Standards, energy efficiency requirements and the long-term decarbonisation of homes.

Research Project – ‘No Access’ and Preparing for Awaab’s Law 

CWAG has linked up with the National Federation of ALMOs, Local Government Association, Chartered Institute of Housing, Association of Retained Council Housing and Councils with ALMOs Group to commission research project which is in two distinct parts:

i) No Access Research

Levels of ‘no access’ have become a growing issue for social landlords in recent years and are under increasing focus due to the new regulatory and legislative environment (particularly requirements around knowing your homes, building safety requirements, and Awaab’s Law). There has been limited work done on best practice and innovation in this area, which this research seeks to address.

This element of the research will explore the challenges and best practice around ‘no access’ to help inform guidance to improve service delivery and identify what works (and what doesn’t work).

ii) Preparations for Awaab’s Law

The researchers will also undertake a review preparations for Awaab’s Law across the local authority sector to better understand the nature and scale of outstanding challenges as well as to identify and share good practice.

Progress and Methodology

Following a procurement exercise, the Housing Quality Network (HQN) have been selected to undertake the research.

To provide background and context material for the research, all council landlords have been asked to complete two surveys by 19^th September 2025. Details of these have been sent directly to lead contacts in both the council and the ALMO. A single return has been requested from each landlord.

HQN is also arranging a number of focus groups to explore both no access and preparations for Awaab’s Law from different perspectives, both tenants and housing practitioners. A timetable showing the different focus groups and how to book places is available here.

Wolverhampton Council to pilot new scheme to accelerate council house building

Homes England has chosen City of Wolverhampton Council as the first local authority in the country to pilot the delivery of a new Affordable Homes Programme.

Aimed at accelerating the delivery of new council homes, the scheme will provide access to a dedicated Government funding portfolio of around £19.7 million, enabling the council to start works over the next 2 years on delivering 200 homes across 11 sites in the city.

The homes will see a mixture of 1, 2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses, flats and bungalows for affordable and social rent. The proposal also includes 67 bungalows – all adaptable, and some wheelchair adapted in response to identified local need from residents.

The scheme will see council housing developed on new sites and existing homes that have poor thermal efficiency and are of poor quality or non-traditional construction will be replaced. Replacing these homes will have a significant impact on the health and wellbeing of local communities.

City of Wolverhampton Council Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for City Housing, Councillor Steve Evans, said: “This additional financial certainty will allow us to accelerate the future delivery of affordable housing provision in the city. This pilot will deliver new homes that will mean residents and the wider community benefit from improved health outcomes, lifestyle and sustainability.”

Shahi Islam, Director of Affordable Housing Grants at Homes England, said: “As the Government’s housing and regeneration agency, increasing the supply of quality affordable homes remains one of our key objectives. We’re committed to supporting Wolverhampton City Council to achieve their ambitions through this innovative pilot scheme ahead of the new Affordable Homes Programme.”

 Government  Publications

Right to Buy Sales and Replacements in England April 2024 – March 2025

MHCLG has published outturn information on the Right to Buy programme in 2024-25. In this period, local authorities reported 7,494 eligible sales, an increase of 7% compared to 2023-24. These sales generated receipts totalling £798 million, an average receipt per dwelling was £106,500. In 2024-25 there were 3,593 replacements funded through receipts from earlier eligible sales.

Latest Homelessness Statistics

MHCLG has published the latest quarterly statistics on statutory homelessness in England (January-March 2025). This shows an 11.8% increase in households in temporary accommodation. The number of households with children in B&B style temporary accommodation has seen a 30.1% decrease.

Also published are the latest quarterly Dashboards on Homelessness. For example, the H-CLIC Performance Dashboard is a high level summary of homelessness figures for each local authority in England showing performance across a handful of key measures allowing for comparison between authorities. Current data relates to January to March 2025.

 Delivering a data standard to support Awaab’s Law in social housing

MHCLG Digital has published a blog post with information about a new data product designed to help social landlords develop new systems to capture tenant specific vulnerabilities and other data requirements linked to the implementation of Awaab’s Law.

An in-person workshop introducing the system will take place in London on 12 September for housing associations and councils. Details on how to book workshop places are included in the blog post.

Round 10 of DESNZ Heat Networks Efficiency Scheme (HNES)

On 5 August DESNZ launched round 10 of the Heat Networks Efficiency Scheme which aims to support performance improvements to existing district heating or communal heating projects reducing carbon emissions and costs to consumers. Up to £2m of revenue grants are available across FY 23/24 and FY 25/25 for up to 100% of eligible project costs of Optimisation Studies. £75m of capital grants are also available covering up to 50% of eligible costs.

Application submission date – 19 September 2025.

 Other Publications

Housing Ombudsman – Complaints about Windows  (August 2025)

The Housing Ombudsman has published its latest ‘learning from ‘severe maladministration’ report which focuses on complaints about windows. This is a long report detailing 38 individual case examples, including multiple cases relating to some landlords.

The report highlights three key areas where landlords are failing:

• Not taking account of the composition and circumstances of the household. Failure to undertake risk assessments that make the connection between household circumstances and the condition of the property. The impact on children and occupants with health conditions in the household are often not factored into the landlord’s response.
• Landlords are routinely deferring window repairs as these are often more suited to major works programmes. Whilst recognising that replacing windows can be complex and costly for landlords, this is not a justification for leaving tenants for long periods with unsafe and defective windows, with potentially serious hazards left unmitigated. Landlords should assess the risks to residents’ safety before deciding not to replace windows outside of long-term major works schedules.
• The report highlights landlord obligations under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) to actively address potential hazards, including interim mitigations where these are needed if works are delayed. Landlords should ensure timely and appropriate responsive repairs are carried out.

Building Beautiful Council Houses – Policy Exchange (August 2025)

The Policy Exchange has published a 35-Point Blueprint for a New Generation of council housing which calls for a return to the traditional social and design ideals that characterised earlier public housing programmes whilst also learning from the mistakes of the past.

 Diary Date – CWAG Annual General Meeting

This year the CWAG Annual General Meeting will be on Thursday 9^th October 2025 (10.00 -12.00). The meeting will take place over Teams. Please note the date in your diary.

At the AGM there will be a discussion around the future direction of the group. Our speakers are:

Jo Allchurch – the newly appointed Director of the Association of Directors of Housing (ADoH). Jo will give an overview of the plans being developed for ADoH and the potential for ADoH to provide representation for councils with ALMOs going forward.

Racheal Williamson, Director of Policy at the Chartered Institute of Housing. Jo will discuss planning for the implementation of the Competence and Conduct Standard.

The formal business of the AGM involves the election of representatives to the Executive as well as reviewing the operating arrangements, work-plan, and financial affairs of the group.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Social Housing is regarded as one of the winners from the Spending Review. Key issues for social housing were initially summarised in the Letter from Housing Minister to registered providers of social housing: Spending Review 2025 – GOV.UK.

Housing Headlines

• £39 billion for a 10-year successor programme to the Affordable Homes Programme to run from 2026/27 – 2035/36. The programme renames Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) will prioritise homes for social rent but will also include affordable rent and shared ownership. Reference to 2.5 billion for low interest loans to support new development with details yet to be announced.
• A 10-year rental settlement based on CPI + 1% each year from April 2026.
• The government has confirmed it will consult on a convergence mechanism to be confirmed at Autumn Budget. A consultation on implementation options will be published shortly.
• Social Landlords will be given equal access to the Building Safety Fund and Cladding Safety Scheme making it easier to fund building safety remediation through government schemes. This change is in response to concerns that building safety liabilities are holding back involvement in new supply projects.
• £100 million for early interventions to prevent homelessness through the Transformation Fund
• £950 million for a 4^th round Local Authority Housing Fund (LAHF) enabling councils to acquire and refurbish properties to increase the supply of better-quality temporary accommodation.

See MHCLG Announcements below for further details.

Latest MHCLG Announcements

Delivering a Decade of renewal for social and affordable Housing

The government has set out its longer term plan for social and affordable housing, including five key steps which will underpin ‘the biggest increase in supply in a generation alongside a transformational and lasting change in the safety and quality of homes’.

The five steps are:

1. Deliver the biggest boost to grant funding in a generation
2. Rebuild the sector’s capacity to borrow and invest in new and existing supply
3. Establish an effective and stable regulatory regime
4. Reinvigorate housebuilding
5. Forge a new relationship with the sector to build at scale

The plan links into a series of further announcements including:

• A 10-year £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP) to deliver around 300,000, at least 60% of which will be for social rent.
• A rental settlement based on CPI+1% for 10 years with the potential to include a convergence mechanism.
• £2.5 billion of low-interest loans over the Spending Review period to support the delivery of new social and affordable housing.

Electrical safety:

Following a consultation undertaken by the previous government, regulations have now been laid before Parliament requiring social landlords to carry out checks on electrical installations at least every 5 years as well as testing of all electrical appliances that are provided as part of a tenancy. These regulations will come into force in November 2025 for new lets, and 6 months later for existing tenancies.

In addition, the original consultation also included a call for evidence regarding a new requirement to check electrical safety installations in owner-occupier leasehold properties within social housing blocks every five years. The government has stated it will provide a separate response on this issue in due course.

Changes to RTB

Following the consultation earlier this year, the government has announced that it will bring forward legislation to implement the following changes:

• Exempt newly built social and affordable housing from the Right to Buy for 35 years.
• Increase the eligibility requirement (currently 3 years as a public secure tenant) to 10 years.
• Prevent existing property owners, or those that have previously benefitted from the scheme, from exercising the Right to Buy unless there are exceptional circumstances, e.g. victims of domestic abuse.
• Amend discount rules so that discounts start at 5% of the property value and increase by 1% for every extra year an individual is a secure tenant up to the maximum discount of 15% of the property value or the cash cap (whichever is lower).
• Increase the period from 5 years to 10 years that the council has the right to ask for repayment of all or part of the discount on the sale of property.
• Extend the period in which a local authority has the right of first refusal when a property previously bought under the Right to Buy is sold so that it applies in perpetuity.

In addition, the receipts regime will be reformed and existing flexibilities on spending Right to Buy receipts will now apply indefinitely allowing councils to combine Right to Buy receipts with grant funding for affordable housing.

Further policy work is also proposed in the following areas:

• Preventing fraud
• Cost floor reforms to better protect investment in existing homes
• Timelines for processing RTB applications
• RTB in rural areas

Competence and Conduct Standard

In a Parliamentary Statement on 2^nd July Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook confirmed that the new Competence and Conduct Standard for social housing  will be implemented from October 2026.

There will be a transition period after this date giving providers additional time to comply with qualification requirements which will apply to senior housing managers and executives. Larger registered providers that own 1,000 or more units of social housing will have three years, and smaller providers that own less than 1,000 units will have four years to achieve compliance.

Reform of the Building Safety Regulator (BSR)

The government has announced its intention to create a single construction regulator, detaching the BSR from its current position within the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). The new separate BSR will have a Board appointed by MHCLG. The change is intended to support government house building plans and allow for a new Fast Track Process to speed up decision making on newbuild applications and remediation decisions.

New National Housing Bank to be set up

Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook has announced the establishment of National Housing Bank to accelerate housebuilding. The new bank will operate as a subsidiary of Homes England with a remit to deliver a long-term financial return for the government.

The scheme will provide up to £16 billion of new financial capacity in the form of loan finance and funding guarantees to support housebuilding and leverage enhanced private sector investment. Likely beneficiaries include SMEs and developers of large complex sites.

Access to social housing

Changes have been announced that will remove local connection rules for young care leavers and victims of domestic abuse to improve access to social housing.

Residential Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (Residential PEEPS)

The Government has published new regulations covering fire safety requirements in respect of disabled and vulnerable people in high rise and higher risk buildings. The regulations cover person-centred fire risk assessments specific to individual relevant residents.

Improving the Energy Efficiency of Socially Rented Homes

The proposals in this consultation would bring the social rented sector into line with changes proposed for the private rented sector using new metrics that are proposed following Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) reform. These proposals would require landlords to meet an updated EPC fabric metric at band C, including either a new heating system or smart readiness metric. The proposed MEES would be part of the reformed Decent Homes Standard and subject to Regulation by the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH).

The government recognises that the proposed standard is different to that which the sector has been working towards so proposes that social rented homes that meet the existing EPC C standard before April 2028 would be considered compliant until their EPC certificates expire.

The consultation also proposes a cost cap of £10,000 per home to avoid excessive spend on individual properties. This would allow landlords to classify a property as compliant even if the property still falls short of the standard. The exemption would last for 10 years from the MEES compliance deadline of April 2030, after which landlords would be expected to bring the property up to the required standard.

This is a 10 week consultation that closes on 10th September 2025.

Consultation on a Reformed Decent Homes Standard

This consultation seeks views on an updated Decent Homes Standard. The current DH standard has not been updated since 2006 and only applies to social landlords. Under these proposals the new DH standard would apply in both the social and private rented sectors. The new standard has an emphasis on tenant safety and keeping homes free from damp and mould. It includes an updated list of core facilities and updated Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES). The proposals aim to strike a balance between modernising and updating the Standard to meet higher expectations whilst remaining proportionate and affordable for providers. Views are sought on changes such as the provision of floor coverings at the start of a tenancy.

This is a 10 week consultation that closes on 10th September 2025.

Social Rent Convergence

The government announced at the Spending Review that it would be implementing a convergence mechanism as part of the new 10-year rental settlement.

This would allow rents on Social Rent properties that are currently ‘below formula’ (i.e lower than the maximum that may be charged when a property is let) to increase by an agreed additional amount to align with formula rents over time.

This consultation addresses is seeking views on how convergence will be implemented, with modelling of options .capped at £1 or £2 per week.

The consultation will inform how the measures are implemented and is seeking views on allowing rents that are currently ‘below formula’ to rise an additional £1 or £2 per week.  Decisions will be confirmed at the Autumn Budget taking into account the implications for rent payers, new supply and the cost to the public finances.

This is an 8 weeks consultation that closes on 27th August 2025.

In preparation for the implementation of the first phase of Awaab’s Law on 27^th October, MHCLG have published draft non-statutory guidance for social landlords. The guidance is not intended as an authoritative interpretation of the law but is a general guide that will be updated to reflect lessons learned in line with the stated ‘test and learn’ approach being adopted.

The guidance provides clarification around timescale requirements which are confirmed as ‘working days’ rather than calendar days. In addition, the relationship with the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) is explained in more detail highlighting that Awaab’s Law offers a person-centred approach taking account of the tenant’s circumstances and vulnerabilities when assessing the risks presented by a hazard. As such, the assessment and categorisation of the hazard may differ from the HHSRS.

Awaab’s Law will be applicable to all social housing occupied under a tenancy that is let by a registered provider. It will not apply to accommodation occupied under licence, low-cost home ownership, shared ownership or long leasehold. To be in scope of Awaab’s Law, the hazard must relate to a building or land for which the social landlord is responsible.

Awaab’s Law: Draft guidance for social landlords – GOV.UK

The government has responded to sector concerns that Awaab’s Law may be used by some unscrupulous ‘claims farmers’ to exploit vulnerable tenants. The Minister for Housing and Planning and the Minister for Courts and Legal Services have therefore announced that they will be launching a Call for Evidence into the activities of Claims Management Companies and referrals to solicitors on a no win no fee basis. The Call for Evidence  will seek views on current practices and consider how to reduce unscrupulous ’claims farming’ activity in housing disrepair cases.

Social Housing Ombudsman Reports

Spotlight Report Repairing Trust

The Housing Ombudsman’s ‘Repairing Trust’ spotlight report indicates that negative experiences with repairs and maintenance is significantly undermining tenants’ trust in their landlords. Poor communication, inadequate complaint handling and lack of empathy all contribute to this distrust. Addressing these issues requires a cultural shift to a more empathetic and transparent approach to managing repairs services.

Building stronger partnerships between landlords, tenants and contractors is crucial to achieving improved outcomes. The report also identifies the current focus on reactive rather than planned maintenance as problematic both in terms of the tenant experience and the longer-term financial impact on landlords.

The report uses examples of good practice alongside instances of poor handling of tenant complaints drawn from the Ombudsman’s casework to signpost the benefits of effective resident focussed approaches based on respect, empathy, accurate information, safety, and mutual trust.

Learning from severe maladministration report – June 2025

The latest Housing Ombudsman report in the Learning from severe maladministration series focuses on poor handling of leaseholder complaints.

Learning from severe maladministration report – July 2025

covers the fundamentals of ASB: the role of the landlord, managing expectations, and where to work with others

Learning from Severe Maladministration

This Update includes the following

Responsibility for fire safety moves to MHCLG

From 1^st April 2025 responsibility for oversight of fire safety was transferred from the Home Office to MHCLG. The change delivers on a key recommendation from the Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s Phase 2 report, which criticised the fragmentation of responsibility for fire safety in the construction industry and advised that fire and building safety should be overseen by a single department.

The change means MHCLG, which already oversees building regulations and housing policy, will also be responsible for fire safety guidance and regulations. This integration is expected to strengthen safety coordination and policy implementation, providing greater clarity and accountability in managing fire risk in residential buildings.

Recent Publications

Securing the Future of Council Housing – Establishing a ‘Green and Decent’ Homes Programme – Southwark Council (May 2025)

This policy proposal document follows the 2024 Southwark report ‘Securing the future of council housing’ which set out proposals for delivering a sustainable HRA Agreement with Government and was endorsed by 112 councils with HRAs. This latest document sets out 10 core principles required for the sector to address current challenges and deliver the wider objectives of building new homes, addressing energy efficiency and net zero as well as building safety and a new decent homes standard. The document highlights both the scale of the challenges facing the sector along with the ambition to tackle them.

Triaging repair reports – key learning around emergencies ahead of Awaab’s Law – Housing Ombudsman (20 May 2025)

This report aims to address a lack of consistency around what social landlords consider to be an emergency repair. A number of severe maladministration cases are examined where the landlord did not identify a repair as an emergency.

Lessons highlighted include:

• Lack of consistency in the way landlords define and approach emergency repairs
• Reports of ‘no access’ leading to closure of cases based on limited evidence
• Failure to make a connection between the circumstances of the person living in the property and its condition
• A pattern of temporary fixes being made but the permanent resolution being severely delayed creating potentially hazardous conditions
• Service failures around poor record keeping and poor communication, including poor coordination and the wrong trades being sent to do works.

The Tackling Stigma Journey Planner – published by the Stop Housing Stigma Campaign (May 2025)

This is a new flexible tool designed to help tenants and landlords work together on plans to tackle social housing stigma. The journey planner will particularly assist tenants and landlords work together to define what it means to comply with the standard that requires landlords to treat tenants with fairness and respect.

Tackling-Stigma-Journey-Planner.pdf

England’s Homeless Children: The crisis in temporary accommodation – HCLG Committee House of Commons (April 2025)

This cross-party committee report focuses on the rising demand for temporary accommodation and the impact on the children affected. There are currently over 164,000 homeless children currently living in temporary accommodation which for many turns out to be very poor quality and far from temporary. The report makes a number of recommendations including:

• Mandatory inspection of housing by local authorities before it is used as temporary accommodation, and whenever new residents are placed in the property.
• New requirement for local authorities to notify the host authority before they make an out of area placement.
• A formalised system for notifying a child’s school and GP if they are moved into temporary accommodation. To
• A call for the government to ensure publication of its strategy on ending homelessness by July 2025 so meaningful progress towards tackling the crisis in temporary accommodation during this Parliament.

Simply about Supply? How Housing Issues vary by Region – Report by IPPR North (April 2025)

This report considers affordability, tenure, and quality issues by region to make the case for regionally responsive housing policy arguing that simply delivering more homes at current or 80% of the market rate (i.e. currently defined as affordable) will not resolve England’s housing issues. The author has summarised the research findings and produced a useful graphic identifying the different housing challenges facing each English Region.

Learning From Severe Maladministration Report – Housing Ombudsman (April 2025)

This latest report from the Housing Ombudsman examines what makes good communication in complaint handling. The report identifies the 4 key elements required for confident and appropriate communication:

• Timely
• Transparent
• Tailored
• Tone

With the implementation of Awaab’s Law less than 6 months away, the need for organisations to review their communications performance, both internal and external, verbal and written, is more pressing than ever. The way an organisation handles communication, provides an insight into organisational culture and values.

The report draws examples from recent casework on damp and mould to highlight the importance of each communication element.

This Update includes the following

New Association of Directors of Housing (AdOH) receives start-up funding from MHCLG

Proposals to set up a new representative body for council housing directors moved a step closer with the announcement of startup funding from MHCLG. The announcement was made by Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook at a housing Summit hosted by Sheffield City Council on 6^th March 2025.

The new association aims to deliver a more unified sector-wide voice on housing policy issues as well as improved outcomes through enhanced collaboration and good practice sharing. The proposals have the backing of the LGA and over 100 councils.

MHCLG funding is intended to cover initial work on recruitment and setting up arrangements. A steering group led by Louise Wood, service director for planning and housing at Cornwall Council and Hakeem Osinaike, strategic director of housing at Southwark Council, is in place to progress the project and establish the new body in 2025/26.

CWAG is represented on the steering group by Geoff Beales who as Chair of CWAG is working to ensure the interests of Councils with ALMOs are reflected in the new arrangements for representation in the sector.

Once the AdOH group is fully established CWAG members will need to consider whether to merge with the new grouping or continue to operate as a separate entity.

Commonhold White Paper

Recent Publications

Learning from Severe Maladministration Cases – Housing Ombudsman (March 2025)

The Housing Ombudsman has released its latest 'learning from severe maladministration' report, focusing on the 'Big 6' building safety compliance areas.

The 23 complaints involve safety in asbestos, fire, water, gas, electrics and lifts, with issues sometimes interfacing with other disrepair concerns. The cases show the human impact of key obligations not being fulfilled to individuals. By grouping these cases together, it is possible to map reoccurring points of service failure and identify areas for learning.

Complaints can act as an early warning sign for landlords to test whether this is an isolated issue or further action is required to prevent repeated failings impacting other residents.

This Update includes the following

Local authorities need more resources to focus on preventing homelessness.

In 2023/24 local authorities spent around £3.1 billion on homelessness of which £2.1 billion was used to provide temporary accommodation. Homelessness Prevention Grant funding amounted to about £440 million. In practice, the high numbers of people already in the homelessness system mean that local authorities use a significant portion of available resources to fund the provision of temporary accommodation, particularly in areas of poor affordability, rather than spending on homelessness prevention activities.

Recommendation: MHCLG needs to set out plans to incentivise and work with local authorities to improve homelessness prevention.

It is unacceptable that B&B accommodation is being used routinely to house people rather than as a last resort

As at June 2024 almost 6,000 homeless families with children were being housed in B&Bs, and almost 4,000 of these families had been there for longer than the statutory maximum period of six weeks.

Recommendation: MHCLG should strengthen its use of HAST advisers in supporting local authorities to reduce their use of B&B accommodation and provide support to local authorities with high rates of temporary accommodation to plan how to reduce their reliance on it.

Too many people are being placed in temporary accommodation outside of their local area

The homelessness legislation and code of guidance state that local authorities should, as far as possible, avoid placing households out of area, however, over the period 2018–19 to 2023–24, the number of households placed out of area increased by 42%. There is a lack of data around how far away from their local areas people are being placed and the wider consequences resulting from this.

 Recommendation: MHCLG should improve its data on out of area placements as a matter of urgency and use the data to encourage better coordination between local authorities, to minimise the number of households placed out of area and incentivise councils to use local providers.

The government is not considering the impact on homelessness when setting Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates

 Capping and freezing LHA rates have reduced the income households can derive from benefits in real terms and 45% of households now face a shortfall between the LHA they receive and the rent they pay. Also, local authority temporary accommodation funding is essentially based on the 2011 LHA rate and has not kept up with rising temporary accommodation costs.

 Recommendation: DWP should set out  for the Committee its justification for the levels of LHA it has set, both for individuals and for local authorities 

The homelessness problem is being exacerbated by a severe shortage in housing supply, and especially affordable housing.

 A significant ramping up of the affordable housing supply is required to achieve a substantial impact on homelessness levels, particularly in areas where homelessness pressures are acute.

 Recommendation: MHCLG should provide the Committee with an update on how its proposed new housing strategy will achieve practical improvements in the delivery of new homes, including targets for new and affordable homes.

Despite legislation designed to tackle well-established problems and gaps in regulation, MHCLG has made no progress in improving the oversight of the supported housing sector.

 The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act came into force in August 2023. This brought forward national standards for support and looked to give local authorities power to tackle poor quality supported housing in their area, yet by the end of 2024 the Act had not been implemented. Ongoing gaps in regulation mean landlords can provide costly, sub-standard housing with little support, supervision or care.

Recommendation: MHCLG should implement the provisions of the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act as quickly as possible. In addition, both MHCLG and Homes England should detail why Homes England fell short of its targets for new homes (including affordable homes) in 2023– 24,  and what steps they are taking to ensure targets for 2024–25 and beyond will be achieved.

Update on the Renters Rights Bill

The Renters’ Rights Bill continues to make legislative progress having passed it’s second reading in the House of Lords on 4^th February 2025. It has now passed most of its legislative hurdles and is expected to become law in Spring / Summer 2025.

The latest amendments include:

Landlords will only be permitted to charge one month’s rent in advance (alongside a security deposit of up to 5 or 6 weeks rent). This will prevent landlords demanding multiple months’ rent in advance as a condition of agreeing a tenancy.

A new rule to protect students aims to end the practice of pressuring students into commitments early into an academic year.  Students will no longer be locked into an agreement where a lease is signed more than 6 months in advance of moving in.

Closing potential loopholes in rent repayment orders (RROs), ensuring superior landlords can be liable for RROs if an offence has been committed even if the rent was not paid directly to them, but through an agent or intermediate landlord.

Fees paid by landlords will directly fund the creation and work of the private rented sector Ombudsman, providing renters and landlords with access to an effective and fair dispute resolution service.

Summary of Main Measures in The Bill :

• The abolition of Section 21 notices.
• Assured Shorthold Tenancies (ASTs) will be replaced by periodic tenancies enabling tenants to end their tenancy at any time on giving 2 months’ notice.
• Rent agreed cannot be higher than advertised.
• Rent increases will be restricted to once per year (twelve months from previous increase).
• Tenants will be able challenge rent increases deemed above market via the First Tier Tribunal.
• Tenants have the right to request to keep a pet and that request cannot be unreasonably refused. However, the tenant will be required to have appropriate pet insurance.
• Landlords will be prohibited from discriminating against tenants who receive benefits or have children residing with them or visiting their premises.
• Awaab’s Law will apply to the Private Rented Sector (PRS).
• Decent Homes Standard will also apply to the PRS.
• There will be a requirement for Landlords to sign up to a Landlord Redress Scheme as well as a PRS database.
• No exemptions are proposed in respect of student housing.
• Landlord penalties  – up to £7000 for the first offence and £40,000 for more serious and repeat non-compliance.

Other Proposals for Improving Standards in the Private Rented Sector

The government has issued a consultation with proposals to raise the minimum energy efficiency standard required of privately rented homes in England and Wales to the equivalent of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C by 2030.

Currently private landlords are only required to meet EPC E in rental properties. The government claims that requiring landlords to meet the higher EPC C standard will save private renters £240 per year on average on their energy bills.

The consultation runs until 2^nd May 2025

Consultation on Right to Buy Reform

Recent Publications

Social housing sales and demolitions 2023-24 – Accredited Official Statistics (February 2025)

MHCLG has published a statistics bulletin setting out headline figures for changes in social and affordable rented stock in the year up to 31st March 2024. The bulletin also includes a figures for sales and demolitions compared with the output figures for new supply of social housing between 1997 and 2024.