Coalition housing plans
For comparison, agendaNi considers the Coalition Government’s changes to housing policy in England to date.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (usually branded as ‘Communities and Local Government’) handles housing policy in England. Housing Minister Grant Shapps reports to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles; both are Conservatives.
The Government’s first housing announcement (on 20 May) was the suspension of the controversial home information packs, required for house sales. The packs, which also applied in Wales, will eventually be abolished and are being replaced by a duty to provide an energy performance certificate for the property.
A consultation on housing finance was also launched, with Shapps seeking a more devolved system. The new self-financing model would see councils keeping all collected rent from their homes and all receipts from any sales of houses or land, in return for taking on an extra share of housing debt.
Brownfield status was also removed from gardens, to prevent so-called ‘garden grabbing’ by developers. Landlords were assured that no new regulations were on the way. Plans for a ‘community right to build’ for rural areas were also set out so that village residents could decide what was built locally.
Shapps has also criticised how homelessness is counted. Most English local authorities this year did not count rough sleepers as they did not think their area had a problem. As a result, the national figure was merely 440. Additional estimates were requested from all councils, which brought to figure up to 1,247. The count will be overhauled from next year onwards.
A ‘national affordable home swap scheme’ was also proposed for social housing tenants wishing to move. This will be piloted in two London boroughs: Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham.
October started with new rules to give tenants more notice to move out if the landlord faced a repossession action. Tenants would be able to attend the relevant court hearing and a judge could delay repossession by up to two months to give them more time to find a new home. However, these were included in a Mortgage Repossessions Act, originally introduced by Labour.
As with most departments, Communities and Local Government saw its budget cut in the spending review, with resource spending to fall by 51 per cent and a
74 per cent cut in capital spending. This made it one of the major losers within Whitehall.
Controversially, social landlords will be allowed to charge new tenants higher rents with the money partly funding 150,000 new affordable homes; the overall bill for this building programme is £4.5 billion. The new rent levels would be between social and market rates and full details are due to be published shortly. Existing tenants will not be affected.
Shadow Communities Secretary Caroline Flint described the cuts to house-building budgets as “devastating”. In response, Shapps said the financial crisis was “incredibly sharp” and claimed that the Coalition Government would build more affordable homes per year than Labour did in 13 years.
