Notice Board

Reform of the planning system is a central priority for the new government as it offers the potential to address the current housing crisis whilst also delivering wider economic growth.

A consultation covering changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has been issued setting out the government’s plans including:

• A new methodology for calculating local authority housing targets designed to support delivery of the Government’s manifesto commitment of 1.5 million new homes in this Parliament.
• A broader definition of brownfield land and an assumption that applications to develop brownfield land will be approved.
• Recognition that to achieve housebuilding targets, councils will need to consider development on parts of the Green Belt that are of low environmental quality, referred to as the ‘grey belt’.
• Clarifications around the ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ including new safeguards against poor quality development.
• Raising building densities in urban areas.
• Measures to improve the delivery of affordable and social housing with an increased priority and focus on social rent.

The consultation runs from 30^th August 2024 to 24^th September 2024

The Knowing our Homes survey is part of a programme of work developed by the NHF in response to the Better Social Housing Review which aims to establish a shared, standardised approach for gathering and using information about the condition of social homes and about the residents who live in them. This should also help social landlords to meet new requirements emerging through the Consumer Standards which set higher expectations for how landlords gather and use information about their homes and their residents.

Although the Better Social Housing Review was initially focused on the housing association sector, the local authority sector has committed to support the work emerging from the review to make sure there is a shared approach across the whole social housing sector. The Local Government Association (LGA), Association of Retained Council Housing (ARCH), National Federation of ALMOs (NFA), and Councils with ALMOs Group (CWAG) are all working together to achieve this and make sure the whole council housing sector is represented.

A survey was sent out to stock retaining local authorities, and local authorities with ALMOs in October 2023. This is the first stage of the work which identifies how local authorities are currently gathering and using data.  49 local authorities responded to the survey (around 30 per cent of local authorities with housing stock), managing around 599,000 social and affordable local authority homes across England (around 38 per cent of the total stock).

Snapshot of Survey Findings

The annual NFA and ARCH survey into income management has been published – On the edge: cost-of-living findings from the council housing sector highlights the difficulties facing many tenants due to cost of living pressures. In the past year rent arrear have risen by around 4% in the 28 council areas represented in the survey (17 ALMOs and 11 Councils). The average amount owed per household also rose from £427 to £527, up by 23%.

In looking to understand the drivers of current trends, the report identifies the impact of severe inflationary pressures which impact disproportionately on the poorest households as well as a welfare system that isn’t for purpose. The system of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) is also under increasing strain with reducing resources and increasing numbers requiring assistance.

Based on these findings, the report makes a number of asks of DWP and government including:

• Increase the basic universal credit element to cover the essentials of housing, food and heat.
• Stop paying universal credit in arrears
• Improve benefits for those in short-term, fluctuating employment
• Set a minimum level of benefit to stop deductions pushing families into destitution and to the brink of homelessness

The Home Office has issued the first in a new series of bimonthly updates on the fire safety reform programme.

The Better Social Housing Review follows a six-month examination of the key issues and challenges facing social housing by a panel of independent experts on behalf of the National Housing Federation and Chartered Institute of Housing. This review addresses itself specifically to housing associations although there is a read across to the wider social housing sector.

The review identifies two central issues as top priorities for people living in social housing:

1. the suitability and quality of housing stock
2. the housing association’s culture and responsiveness to tenants’ concerns and complaints

There are seven key recommendations:

• The sector should refocus on its core purpose – to provide decent, safe homes for those who can’t afford the market.

• A national audit of social housing stock to develop a consistent picture of the state of social housing across the country. The report recommends that all organisations should use the new HACT UK Housing Data Standards.

• Organisations should bring together tenants, frontline staff and contractors to review maintenance and repairs and develop new approaches and definitions for what an excellent maintenance and repairs process looks like.

• There should be a renewed focus on resources and training to support the traditional housing officer role.

• Tenants should be recognised as key partners with initiatives to expand their role within organisations to ensure tenants have a voice and influence at every level of decision making.

• Organisations should develop a proactive local community presence through community hubs which foster greater multi-agency working.

• Organisations should work with their tenants and frontline to undertake an annual review of the progress in implementing the recommendations of the review.

The review has been warmly welcomed by housing organisations and others including Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, who endorsed the call for an audit of stock condition and action on disrepair along with other improvements to address wider resident concerns around service delivery and engagement.

At the recent CWAG AGM, Jonathan Cox from Housemark discussed the practical issues and challenges involved in achieving compliant data collection arrangements by April 2023 when TSMs are introduced.

The overall trend in perception surveys over the past 5 years has consistently shown a decline in satisfaction levels. Many landlords stopped carrying out the STAR survey once this was no longer mandatory, these landlords will find their baseline is now much lower than historical data.

The move to perception based TSMs will provide landlords with important resident feedback to constructively drive improvements that tenants recognise and value. However, in his presentation Jonathan identified five barriers to making the most of TSM survey feedback including being overly focussed on scores, a fragmented approach to surveying, questions overload and survey fatigue, as well as a lack of internal capacity to use the data effectively.

Housemark has also identified 11 major variables affecting perception survey scores including:

Contextual Issues

• Location / Urbanisation (tenants in cities report lower satisfaction)
• Tenant age (older people tend to be more satisfied)
• Tenure type (leaseholders, although not part of TSM surveying, tend be the most dissatisfied followed by shared owners with renters relatively more satisfied)
• Size of landlord (smaller landlords tend to get higher scores, possibly because there is likely to be a single point of contact for tenants)

Methodological Issues

• Collection method will impact on scores (on-line surveys will be 10 -15 points lower than face-to-face surveying, with telephone surveys somewhere in between) Transactional surveys give the highest scores but are not allowed for TSMs)
• Sample selection (general needs stock will differ from more specialist provision),
• Scale (smaller sample sizes can distort results)
• Time of year (scores of surveys carried out in Winter are approximately 2% lower than for surveys carried out in Summer)

Landlord performance drivers

• Landlord accessibility and responsiveness (how quickly and easily can the tenant contact the landlord and resolve issues)
• Respectful and helpful engagement (is the landlord perceived as helpful and respectful in the way it engages with tenants)
• Responsive repairs (tenant experience of the landlord on responsive repairs is a significant driver of overall perception of, and satisfaction with the landlord)