Housing Quality Magazine November 2021

ISSUE 6: NOVEMBER 2021 Using tech to go back to basics Interview: Steve Douglas Special pull-out: Evidence

How does housing balance the books?

With increasing and competing demands, we look at the future of the sector’s finances

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

1

Welsh Housing Awards 2021 Winner | Working in Partnership Ty Tom Jones | From zero to complete supported housing project in 6 weeks

“We are proud to have to have worked in partnership with The Wallich, Goleudy and Swansea Council as part of the council’s efforts to increase the supply of homes for homeless people in Swansea.

“This project moved from concept to delivery in just six weeks, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the urgent need for more accommodation, and is a great example of what can be done working collaboratively to tackle the wider issue of homelessness.”

Andrew Vye, Executive Director Operations, Pobl Group

www.poblgroup.co.uk

CONTENTS 5 Welcome 6 News in brief 7 Housing by numbers 8 Life in 15 questions 10 In the frame 12 Evidence 22 Interview: Steve Douglas 26 Balancing housing finances 30 Using tech to get back to basics

November 2021

34 Comment: Feedback Ferret 36 Comment: Fuzzlab 40 Ombudsman Corner 42 A day in the life 43 Resident’s view 44 Fact or fiction 46 The last word

Published by: HQN Rockingham House St Maurice’s Road York YO31 7JA Editorial: Alistair McIntosh Mark Lawrence Janis Bright Email: mark.lawrence@hqnetwork.co.uk Tel: 07523 920010

26

Advertising: All enquiries to: ellie.salsbury@hqnetwork.co.uk Tel: 07542 860095

Balancing sector finances With the financial pressures facing housing providers only increasing, how do you balance the books?

Design: Sam Wiggle Published six times a year. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited.

22

30

12

Interview: Steve Douglas

Technology the Enabler

Evidence

St Mungo’s CEO sits down with us to assess the future of homelessness policy and what he expects to see from Michael Gove.

Housing has long seen technology as simply gadgets and not essential. How can it use tech to do the basics better?

Want to see some analysis of the latest policy in the sector? Our friends at CaCHE and HSA have you covered.

EVIDENCE update The latest research and analysis – in plain English In this issue: 12 Welcome 12 The costs of spending cuts: the Local Housing Allowance and overcrowding 14 How the planning process in England is reinforcing racial inequality

Issue 33 | November 2021

16 Building relationships to boost equalities, diversity and inclusion 17 Affordable housing investment to lead the way out of the crisis?

18 Stamp duty: another boost for homeowners at expense of first time buyers

Welcome

Get interactive

Click

Watch

Listen

As we move swiftly from the party conferences to the Budget and COP26, finance and economics grab the public’s attention.

How will the country afford to decarbonise? How will we overcome the shortages and affordability issues in housing?

In this issue we look at some detailed aspects of housing finance and costs. In the wake of the £20 Universal Credit uplift ending, Amy Clair from the University of Essex looks at the negative effects of a previous cut, to Local Housing Allowance. She finds that overcrowding among private renters significantly increased – putting people at risk of a range of health problems.

The forecast for creating new affordable homes to alleviate overcrowding and high costs remains uncertain, finds John Perry in an extract from the latest UK Housing Review. Although more affordable housing may be created in England, needs continue to soar ahead of provision.

And in a second extract, Mark Stephens considers the dysfunctional way that property is taxed in the UK. Have any lessons be learnt from the stamp duty fiasco of the late 1980s?

The planning system is the topic of Amy Bristow’s research. In a new report, she finds that planning entrenches disadvantage for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups. Formal equality of treatment in the system is not enough to overcome inequalities, she finds: action is needed to promote equalities agendas and meet the needs of BAME groups.

Elsewhere, our partners CaCHE are launching an exciting initiative on equalities, diversity and inclusion – and there’s a warm welcome for HQN members to take part. Read more about what’s planned in Gareth Young and Nadia Ayed’s introduction.

Janis Bright Editor, Evidence

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE

The costs of spending cuts: the Local Housing Allowance 2021 NOVEMBER and overcrowding Amy Clair from the University of Essex considers the counterproductive effects of policy changes At the time of writing the £20

per week Universal Credit cut has just taken effect, equating to a cut of £5 billion in social security spending. Many people, including some Conservative backbenchers and peers, are concerned about the impact this will have on

3

It pays to be flexible Going above and beyond for you and your tenants No one knows what hurdles life will throw at us next. But with Pay360’s payments ecosystem, your payment processes won’t be one of them.

Pay360 offers you: • Over 20 years’ experience providing payment solutions to housing associations • A wide and flexible range of payment options to offer your tenants • High levels of management control and security for the association • Easy and efficient cash flow management with real-time income reporting • All through one back-office integration So, while we can’t help with everything, at least payments won’t be a problem.

Pay360 by Capita Go to pay360.com/housing to find out more

Pay360 by Capita 65 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7NQ Phone: 0333 313 7160 Email: pay360digitalsales@capita.co.uk A trading name of Capita Business Services Limited.

The big lessons from COP26 must be learned “I was sick and tired of everything when I called you last night from Glasgow” sang Abba in 1980. If Agnetha and her chums rocked up for COP26, they’d have thought they were at the tinsel town in the rain city of Glasvegas instead.

Our braw homemade Hillman Imps have gone to the scrapyard in the sky. Now, our celebrity visitors waft around in limos and private jets. And anyone who’s anyone does what they always do when they visit Glasgow: they stay in Edinburgh.

The protestors were long on righteousness but short on local knowledge. Why would you glue yourself to a panda car? Sooner or later, the polis huckle everyone in Glasgow. Please wait your turn!

My man on the inside tells me that COP26 was “like going into a huge corporate trade fair”. And we know how well these things work. Homelessness and poor housing conditions are eradicated thanks to the mega events we have in housing. Kilts, ballgowns, and dandruff edged dinner suits with bulging cummerbunds, topped off by self-tying bow ties, solve everything. Well, maybe not.

But we do have to learn a big lesson from COP26. It was, as our French friends would say, full of leaders pontificating about the end of the world, when too many people are worrying about the end of the month.

As the delegates were reading their autocues, lots of folk in Glasgow were worrying about putting the heating on because of the bills.

For me, the funniest moment was when a random public schoolboy from a Mungo Jerry tribute band, George Monbiot, told us to stop eating meat.

Has he even seen a Scotch pie? All I can say is that the sheep got away with flesh wounds. They’re perfectly

safe for even the strictest vegan.

The worry is that we load more and more costs onto people which they simply can’t afford. Will the weekly food bill soar? Will holidays get more expensive? Do you need a Tesla to get to work?

These items are neither here nor there to decision makers. That means they shouldn’t be in that exalted position. I read last week that no one on the committee that sets mortgage rates actually has a mortgage.

Are we any different? Do the tenants and shared owners get any say in the rents we set?

It’s a tricky balancing act. We absolutely do need to decarbonise homes and we do need to build new ones. Naturally, that costs money.

Go to any conference and you’ll get a free pen and a shot on the Scalextric from the folk who want you to do those things. And more power to their elbow.

But we need to listen just as hard to the residents who pay the rents. They’re fighting on all fronts with rising costs. Can we help them?

I was talking about council tax to a friend who works in hospitality. Surely you can see the case for a modest increase every year for education, social care, and the like, I said. She replied that’s all well and good but people like me never get a wage increase.

You can’t get blood out of a stone, even for good causes. Realistically, what can your residents pay this year? That’s the starting point.

Alistair McIntosh, Chief Executive, HQN

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

5

News in brief Labouring through housing policy Labour’s shadow housing secretary, Lucy Powell, said her party is going to be “bold, radical, forward thinking, and empowering” on housing.

After releasing their housing plans at their party conference, it’s safe to say it’s nothing the sector hasn’t heard before.

However, all the aims are worthwhile and spot on in their objectives, talking of “rebalancing power” by taking it away from developers who currently set the terms of development.

For example, the plans include: • Ensuring councils have stronger powers to deliver affordable housing, not housing that will make the most profit for developers • Give first time buyers first dibs on new homes, and stop foreign buyers from buying up homes off plan • Set out an ambition to reestablish the link between genuinely affordable housing and average earnings.

Encouragingly, at the Housing 2021 conference in Manchester, Powell was keen to work with housing to develop policy, asking for ideas and expertise. She also praised the work of Andy Burnham on homelessness, suggesting Housing First could be a key plank of Labour’s housing policy.

And if Labour’s housing policy wasn’t too inspiring, is the sector to expect much more from new secretary of state Michael Gove?

Some in the sector cautiously welcomed the former education secretary to the post, saying he wasn’t afraid to throw out the rule book.

Unfortunately, while many teachers would agree with that, it maybe wouldn’t be in the most positive of ways.

But what can the sector learn from Gove’s rhetoric and actions so far? He immediately shrugged off impartiality suggestions after receiving a £100,000 donation from a property developer shortly before the post was handed to him, and then proceeded to halt planning reforms laid out by his predecessor.

Reports suggest the Prime Minister has urged him to end the building safety crisis before the next election and make levelling up a priority. He made moves in this regard by changing the name of the department to the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The sector should

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

perhaps think itself lucky it’s still there – poor old local government has been shunted out completely.

His party conference speech said little, if anything, about housing, focusing more on jokes rather than anything concrete on what levelling up may mean. He did call social housing “scandalously poor” in a fringe event though, but perhaps reassuringly spoke of the need for social housing.

However, the little noise coming out of the spending review on social housing may be the biggest give away. Maybe he’s still finding his (dancing) feet?

Watch HQN TV for a weekly roundup of the housing news

Cops and bluffers As this edition goes to print, the country is hosting COP26, the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference.

But unless the government invests properly in decarbonising homes and puts in place proper measures to ensure all new homes are of a net-zero standard, it’ll be all bluff and no substance.

Photo: House of Commons

6

Gove to the rescue?

A full investment in net-zero social rented homes is needed for jobs, people, the supply chain, and most importantly, the economy. Will we get it? It remains unlikely while the country remains distracted by silly debates and refuses to be educated on the topic by an 18-year-old girl.

of LGBT residents feel uncomfortable living in non-LGBT housing homes completed in the last quarter (MHCLG)

is the amount councils in England are warning that homelessness services’ costs are due to increase by in next three years (LGA)

Housing by numbers

households threatened with ‘no-fault’ evictions since the government announced they would scrap them (Generation Rent)

is the amount the economy could be boosted by if the government was to deliver an increased strategy for decarbonising homes (Greenpeace UK)

people could be forced into poverty due to universal credit cuts (JRF)

is the amount the Northern Ireland government has put toward ensuring stability in the social housing construction sector following recent volatility in the costs of materials

of the British public believe housing is one of the most important issues facing the country (Ipsos Mori)

homes in England that contain a ‘category 1 hazard’ (Good Home Inquiry)

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

7

A life in 15 questions Dawn Hendon Corporate Director of Governance and Compliance, whg

1. Tell us about your career and how you ended up in your current role I’m one of the many people who ‘fell’ into housing and have never looked back. After a couple of brief job roles post-university, I took what I expected to be a brief temping role at Accord Housing Association, which involved admin for repairs. After a couple of weeks I moved onto the phones and for around six months I dealt with all manner of repairs calls, and came to understand what a housing association does and the hugely direct impact it has on people’s lives.

When the chief executive’s PA retired, the role was advertised with a particular focus on policy work and research. I worked as a PA for eight years before moving onto a range of other roles.

I became Executive Director of Governance and Corporate Affairs as part of the merger to create GreenSquareAccord, but, as timing would have it, the role at whg became available in 2021. whg is an organisation I knew quite well, having chaired a whg committee – plus, I’m a Walsall girl!

I was delighted to be appointed in April this year and the past few months have flown by.

2. Describe yourself in three words Calm, inquisitive, and positive.

3. Most overused phrase?

Using the word ‘fab’, especially on phone calls. Who even talks like that?

8

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

4. Favourite place on earth?

That’s a tough one. There are so many places to choose from, but Ynyslas beach and the Dyfi Valley in Wales are special places.

5. What would you change about yourself?

My posture. It’s shocking.

6. Describe your home I live in the same house I grew up in! A 1930s three-bed semi in Walsall that really does need a bit of attention now but has treasured memories going back years and years, enmeshed in the cracks of the paintwork and scars on the floors.

7. What makes you angry?

Generally, injustice. Daily, other car drivers.

8. Most treasured possession?

The pool cue I won after winning my university pool championship – and it’s one shot on the black ball, people, one shot!

9. Best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

You always have some sort of choice, you just have to look for it sometimes.

10. If you won £1 million on the Lottery, what would you spend it on?

Honestly, probably an indulgent holiday for my family where we could spend some relaxed time together. And I’d like to help make a difference in education – through a bursary or similar – perhaps at the school where I’m Chair of Governors.

11. Biggest achievement?

My children of course. Workwise, it’s probably the large corporate projects I’ve led on, such as stock acquisitions, partnerships, and mergers. The amount of sheer effort that goes into those sorts of things is easily underestimated!

12. Biggest regret?

I don’t look backwards much but I do wish I’d taken more time to listen to my grandmothers’ stories of their pasts.

13. Recommend a book So difficult! I read anything and everything and could easily recommend loads of great books.

I really enjoyed The Essex Serpent

by Sarah Perry. At least once a year, though, I re-read The Stand by Stephen King – can’t explain why but I love that book.

14. The best piece of television in the last 12 months?

Ozark.

15. Tell us a secret about yourself I used to work for an ex-prime minister…

Environmental Sensors

POWERFUL INSIGHTS. PROACTIVE MAINTENANCE. PREVENTATIVE MEASURES. Create smarter, safer homes for your residents with HomeLINK – the connected home solution for social landlords. Our Environmental Sensors and HomeLINK portal have been designed to create better maintained, healthier and energy efficient homes, enabling preventative maintenance strategies and the delivery of unrivalled service to residents.

To learn more about HomeLINK, please visit www.aico.co.uk/ HomeLINK

The HomeLINK Portal From energy efficiency to indoor air quality, you can access a wealth of actionable insights via the HomeLINK dashboard, segmented by high, medium and low risk.

Ei1020 & Ei1025 The Ei1020 measures temperature and humidity while the Ei1025 measures temperature, humidity and CO2, providing actionable insights into conditions such as mould risk, draught risk and indoor air quality.

Ei1000G SmartLINK Gateway The SmartLINK Gateway is a central hub for data and is required to extract insights from connected Environmental Sensors, Fire and Carbon Monoxide Alarms.

www.aico.co.uk | 01691 664100 | enquiries@aico.co.uk

The European Market Leader in Home Life Safety

In the frame

 Garden gallery North West Leicestershire

 Construction kids Cobalt Housing

District Council Local artists and special guests recently celebrated the success of Coalville’s first outdoor art gallery exhibition.

Pupils from Our Lady and St Swithin’s school joined staff on site to learn about site safety, careers in construction, and how houses are built.

 Community celebration Gloucester City Homes GCH’s Annual Community Impact Day sees over 150 staff turn their hands to a wide range of community projects, which this year included moving 40 tonnes of bark, painting, building play areas, gardening, and serving cream tea.

10

 Warm welcome Barnet Homes

 Glasgow greens Wheatley Group

Residents at Prospect Ring had a celebration at the end of September to welcome new residents at Gracie House to the area.

A Loretto tenant in Glasgow has created a stunning garden that’s bringing people together and creating a real sense of community.

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

 Flying high Hackney Council High-flying local students have been getting creative to kick off the academic year with a kite-flying session in Springfield Park.

 Painting pals Sixtown Housing

 Jukebox gems Orbit Group

New art workshops aim to promote good mental wellbeing and explore residents’ creative interests so they can learn techniques they can use in their own time.

A national dance group has performed for residents at independent living schemes to reach those who are unable to access live theatre, particularly isolated or vulnerable older adults.

 Rising stars Barking and Dagenham Council In partnership with a local arts organisation, Studio 3 Arts, the council hosted the seventh annual Youth Parade to celebrate the borough’s inspirational young people and the positive contribution they make.

If you’d like to be featured In the Frame, please email your pictures to mark.lawrence@hqnetwork.co.uk

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

11

EVIDENCE update The latest research and analysis – in plain English In this issue: 12 Welcome 12 The costs of spending cuts: The local housing allowance and overcrowding 14 How the planning process in England is reinforcing racial inequality

Issue 33 | November 2021

16 Building relationships to boost equalities, diversity, and inclusion 17 Affordable housing investment to lead the way out of the crisis?

18 Stamp duty: Another boost for homeowners at expense of first time buyers

Welcome As we move swiftly from the party conferences to the Budget and COP26, finance and economics grab the public’s attention.

How will the country afford to decarbonise? How will we overcome the shortages and affordability issues in housing?

In this issue we look at some detailed aspects of housing finance and costs. In the wake of the £20 universal credit uplift ending, Amy Clair from the University of Essex looks at the negative effects of a previous cut, to local housing allowance. She finds that overcrowding among private renters significantly increased – putting people at risk of a range of health problems.

The forecast for creating new affordable homes to alleviate overcrowding and high costs remains uncertain, finds John Perry in an extract from the latest UK Housing Review. Although more affordable housing may be created in England, needs continue to soar ahead of provision.

And in a second extract, Mark Stephens considers the dysfunctional way that property is taxed in the UK. Have any lessons been learnt from the stamp duty fiasco of the late 1980s?

The planning system is the topic of Amy Bristow’s research. In a new report, she finds that planning entrenches disadvantage for Black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups. Formal equality of treatment in the system isn’t enough to overcome inequalities, she finds: action is needed to promote equalities agendas and meet the needs of BAME groups.

Elsewhere, our partners CaCHE are launching an exciting initiative on equalities, diversity and inclusion – and there’s a warm welcome for HQN members to take part. Read more about what’s planned in Gareth Young and Nadia Ayed’s introduction.

Janis Bright Editor, Evidence

The costs of spending cuts: The local housing allowance and overcrowding Amy Clair from the University of Essex considers the counterproductive effects of policy changes.

At the time of writing, the £20

12

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

per week universal credit cut has just taken effect, equating to a cut of £5bn in social security spending. Many people, including some Conservative backbenchers and peers, are concerned about the impact this will have on

people’s lives as they adjust to this lower level of support.

In a recent analysis, I explored the impact of a previous cut to financial support – in this case, support for housing costs for low-income private renters. From April 2011, the local housing allowance (LHA) level was set at the 30th percentile of rent in a local area, cut from the 50th percentile (median) rent. So, rather than supporting renters to afford housing in the cheapest half of the local market, renters were supported only in the cheapest three out of 10 homes, costing affected households an average of £1,220 per year.

Analysis conducted shortly after this change found that, contrary to government arguments that the reduction would put downward pressure on rents, the majority of the impact of the reduction was felt by renters who were having to either find money for housing costs from elsewhere or otherwise adapt. One way for households to adapt was to move into homes that were smaller and less suitable.

Using data from the English Housing Survey 2008-2016 it’s possible to explore whether this reduction in the LHA resulted in an increase in overcrowding, and whether the changes to uprating in the years that followed exacerbated the problem. Analysis of the immediate impact shows that, even after accounting for differences between renters, the reduction resulted in a statistically significant 5% increase in overcrowding among recipients in the years immediately following the change, equivalent to 75,000 additional households living in overcrowded homes. Singleparent families, households with dependent children, households that include a disabled person or people, households headed by women, and racially marginalised households will have been most severely affected, as these households are more likely to be in receipt of the LHA. Exacerbating the initial reduction in LHA were successive changes to how it was uprated. Rather than uprating monthly and in line with changes to rents, from April 2013 the LHA was uprated annually, capped at the Consumer Price Index – a measure of inflation that does not include housing costs. In 2014 and 2015, increases were limited to 1%, and then frozen for four years from 2016. As a result rents have increased much faster than LHA rates, further undermining the support lowincome private renters receive. Analysis of the English Housing Survey shows that these changes also resulted in further increases in overcrowding, although at a less significant rate than the initial change to the 30th percentile. The continued

increase in overcrowding among recipients of the LHA is in contrast to the continued decrease in overcrowding among private renters who didn’t receive LHA support.

Overcrowding is linked with a range of significant mental and physical health problems, but in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic the overcrowding these policy changes caused in the years prior will have created even greater problems.

The pandemic, and particularly the lockdowns introduced in response, required people to spend greater time in their homes, a particularly difficult experience in an overcrowded home. The idea of staying home to stay safe is seriously undermined by overcrowding, which has been linked with the spread of and mortality from Covid-19.

Significant cuts to financial support, whether the LHA or universal credit, are often justified by the need to reduce spending and claims of financial responsibility. There’s no denying that spending on support for renters has increased dramatically.

However, this increase is the inevitable result of policy decisions dating from at least the 1980s that have undermined the social rented sector, removed rent controls in the private sector, and encouraged rising property prices.

The spending increases aren’t due to the frivolous spending of private renters, but the HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

13

result of constrained housing choices that have made the private rented sector, with its high costs, the second largest tenure in the UK. The results of this analysis show the counterproductive effects of cuts to financial support. Any savings resulting from reducing the LHA will have been severely undermined by increased spending elsewhere, notably on health.

In the short term the LHA should be increased (and the benefit cap adjusted accordingly), while in the longer term more wide-ranging policy changes in policy will be required. The pandemic

has served as an important reminder of the centrality of housing to our well-being, and the need to take a more holistic approach to policy making.

Dr Amy Clair is a research fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex.

The effect of local housing allowance reductions on overcrowding in the private rented sector in England https://bit.ly/3GkpUYD

How the planning process in England is reinforcing racial inequality Amy Bristow reports on her recent research revealing the ways the planning system fails to take account of the needs of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people.

Research shows that Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) groups in the UK continue to face stark socioeconomic inequality. Some 1.6 million households in England are estimated to need social housing, and this problem is compounded for BAME communities as they are more likely to face additional barriers to accessing social housing and to live in poorer quality or overcrowded accommodation. Owing to its key role in housing delivery, as well as its potential to impact on wider socioeconomic outcomes through spatial strategies, the planning system has been described as having ‘untapped potential’ in addressing these kinds of racial inequalities and meeting the accommodation needs of BAME households.

However, studies around ‘race and planning’ conducted since the 1980s have consistently concluded that planning professionals struggle to relate issues of racial equality to their work. Our new report on the subject draws on findings from key informant interviews alongside case studies in Bradford, Harrow, Lambeth, and Lewisham.

Social conservatism within planning Our research found that tackling racial inequalities in housing and meeting the housing needs of BAME groups aren’t core aims of planning, nor are they included anywhere within the National Planning

14

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

Policy Framework or the 2020 government White Paper. Key informant interviews showed that, whilst the idea of an inclusive planning system has been long discussed, this has never been achieved. It was felt that the make-up of planning authorities and the nature of planning processes may reproduce or even exacerbate inequalities.

Local case studies revealed an unwillingness amongst planning and housing professionals to prioritise certain groups over others, with the focus remaining on formal equality of treatment rather than proactive intervention to address entrenched inequality. It was also suggested that equality impact assessments (EqIAs) often become ‘tick-box’ exercises and that findings are rarely actioned, leading to what one interviewee labelled “conscious discrimination” by some local authorities.

Failure to adequately assess BAME housing needs Research findings identified data gaps within local authorities for evidencing how decisions and policies impact on BAME groups. There’s currently no explicit requirement for local planning authorities to consider the needs of ethnic and/or faith groups when completing their statutory assessment of local housing need.

Despite this, the needs of these groups were considered in the respective Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) in three of four case study areas. Nevertheless, this evidence didn’t translate into specific policy, except in Bradford, where such an inclusion was prompted by local BME housing providers during consultation.

The challenges of participation Public consultation opportunities were generally found to reinforce existing unequal power relationships by favouring those with the time, knowledge, and confidence to participate. The evidence showed that not enough is done to engage residents from ethnic minority, low-income, and other less frequently heard groups. Whilst online forms of consultation deployed during the pandemic did go some way to improving accessibility, these in turn could reflect patterns of digital exclusion, therefore an overhaul of the entire process is still urgently required.

The potential of planning Respondents acknowledged that EqIAs and public consultation processes, together with SHMAs, could all be used to gather robust evidence on the housing needs of local BAME groups. Whether and how these tools are used to pursue this agenda is currently at the discretion of local authorities; however, with the appropriate directives, funding, and staffing, the planning system could be the right vehicle to develop a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the housing needs of BAME communities in local authority areas. There was a consensus across all four authorities studied that planning could exert particular influence over the design and layout of new properties, and examples showed how this influence had been utilised to meet BAME housing needs.

needs of BAME residents where these aren’t being adequately met. As within planning, there must be a shift away from formal equality of treatment and a willingness to actively promote equalities agendas where necessary. The National Housing Federation should support housing associations, particularly specialist BME providers but also providers with large numbers of BAME or lowincome residents, in lobbying for increased partnership working with local authorities. It should also issue guidance to housing providers to raise awareness of how decisions surrounding the design and location of new housing could inadvertently make it unsuitable for some BAME households.

Planning has significant potential to positively impact communities in the post-pandemic era, but meaningful change is urgently needed at all levels to ensure this happens. For the full report and recommendations, click here.

Amy Bristow is a researcher at the Institute for Social Policy, Housing, Equalities Research (I-SPHERE) at Heriot-Watt University.

What needs to change Despite its limitations, planning remains a critical policy area for addressing racial inequalities in housing. Equalities considerations should be embedded throughout any central planning reforms to compel local authorities to consider racial equality in all planning decisionmaking, without this becoming another tick-box exercise. But how can housing professionals support and influence change?

Our recommendations suggest that housing professionals should have the confidence to develop policies aimed specifically at meeting the housing HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

15

Building relationships to boost equalities, diversity, and inclusion Gareth Young and Nadia Ayed discuss a new initiative starting this month by the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Excellence.

At CaCHE we’re delighted to announce our equality, diversity, and inclusion initiative, which will form a core part of the work we do at CaCHE now and going forward.

The key aim of this work is to have meaningful and engaging conversations about housing and diversity in the broadest sense, using our platform to share people’s real stories and experiences of housing and home. You can read more about our plans here.

As we begin this work, we’re very openly saying we don’t have all the answers. We don’t have all the right people to take on the work, and we don’t have a full understanding of precisely what issues exist or how we might be able to build an ongoing research agenda that addresses these key challenges facing policy, practice, and communities.

We want this to be a chance to build and deepen relationships, to bring together new networks of people who have the power and ability (whether this be through knowledge and lived experiences, or resources to fund and support research) to do this work well. We want to broaden our relationships. We want to encourage our academics, and future generations, to think about the diversity of their work and teaching.

So, to begin the work, we’re opening up to anyone who wants to contribute – working with existing partners but also trying to reach out wider to run a story-telling series. These can be blogs, videos, Q&A interviews – whatever people feel comfortable doing. We want to get the conversation going, encouraging people to respond to others, build on discussions and keep sharing positive experiences in housing, but also (where people feel comfortable and able) to share stories of what needs greater focus and redressing within the housing system. We want to use our platform to share these stories, to begin the debate within CaCHE (and housing studies in the UK more broadly) and to ensure that we can meaningfully embed EDI throughout all of our work, starting today.

16

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

We’re doing our own learning internally and with other partners, such as the Housing Studies Association. But we want to emphasise we’re listening. We know we might get things wrong, and while we’re making all efforts to handle this work sensitively, we will change, adapt, and develop as we continue to understand and improve. In this spirit, we welcome constructive feedback so that this can be an open, collaborative, and iterative learning experience.

We welcome all HQN members to get involved.

If you’d like to contribute anything (and when we talk about EDI we’re referring to it in the broadest sense, so everyone is welcome to write about their experiences) or to discuss ideas, please contact Nadia Ayed (n.ayed@qmul.ac.uk) and Gareth Young (gareth.young@sheffield.ac.uk) in the first instance.

Gareth Young is a Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fellow at CaCHE. Nadia Ayed is a PhD Candidate at Queen Mary University London.

JOIN NOW! The Housing Studies Association (HSA) is a UK-wide membership organisation which brings together researchers, practitioners and professionals to promote the study of housing. HSA runs a programme of events including our annual conference and our public lecture on housingrelated themes. The Association also offers: • Events grant scheme enabling members to disseminate and discuss their work, • Seminar Series grant competition • Conference bursaries to early career and/or nonwaged housing researchers and practitioners • The prestigious annual Valerie Karn prize for best paper by an early career housing researcher.

Become a member from just £25 a year and access these benefits plus reduced rates to our events.

See www.housing-studies-association.org Follow us on twitter @HSA_UK.

Affordable housing investment to lead the way out of the crisis?

John Perry outlines the prospects for new affordable housing in an extract from the latest UK Housing Review.

The Review’s annual assessment of government support for housing investment and what proportion goes towards affordable housing showed a significant shift this year. In Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland most support (between 74 and 100%) goes towards affordable housing, whereas in England most has gone to private housing. In 2020, three-quarters was aimed at supporting the private market. The current picture for England (see chart) is more favourable: a rather bigger affordable homes programme, coupled with the ending of some of the Cameron-Osborne incentives to the private market, has shifted affordable housing’s share to 46%.

In England, the big question is still whether this is sufficient. Before the pandemic, there was already evidence that needs had increased above the level indicated by Glen Bramley’s comprehensive assessment, based on 2015/16 data, which called for 90,000 social rented units annually, together with 25,000 for shared ownership. Problems have

since worsened. Overcrowding has increased, particularly in the private rented sector, where 15% of tenants are now overcrowded. Also, some 9% of private renters (353,000 households) are in arrears, compared with only 3% in 2019/20. More than one-fifth of private renters have lost income (at least £100 per month) during the pandemic.

Despite economic recovery, more low-income workers now subsist in ‘a very unstable and precarious labour market’.

Grant-funded affordable housing completions in England totalled 33,044 in 2020/21, rather below the annual average of 38,800 since 2010/11, in part because of the pandemic. The Theresa May government set a 50,000 annual target for affordable housing completions, and average delivery over the last 10 years achieved this via a sizeable contribution of units provided without grant assistance. The Johnson government has set a target of 180,000 grant-funded starts for 2021-26 (i.e. 36,000 annually): essentially this is the same target expressed in a different way, and while it should be achievable it now looks to fall even further short of rising needs.

The picture is even worse if the focus is on social rented housing, with just 2,102 completed with grant aid in 2020/21, although non-grant-funded completions might well raise this to around 5,000 when figures become available.

However, an indication of difficulties of expanding such output comes from London, where the mayor aimed to build 11,000 new council houses to be let close to social rents over the period 201820, and just 1,632 have been built so far. Greater London Authority efforts to switch resources to social rent are said to be constrained by government rules requiring that at least 47% of the budget is spent on intermediate tenures.

In Scotland, achievement of the 50,000 affordable homes target over the five years to

Source: Based on UK Housing Review 2021, table 2.4.1.

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

17

March 2021 was thwarted by the pandemic, with completions falling to 6,466 in the final year, whereas they’d exceeded 9,000 in the two previous years. Providers must now deliver the delayed completions this year, while also beginning the next round of the programme covering the five years to 2026 and requiring the same output with a similar budget. While the new target is close to meeting assessed need, the fact that the budget stays the same has caused concern. Grant will be subject to new conditions including those about indoor and outdoor space, energy efficiency, and digital connectivity, and there are questions over whether the sector can provide better quality homes within the planned budget or whether rents will have to increase to cover the difference.

Research by SFHA also points to increased costs of labour and materials.

In Wales, delays in producing statistics again

make it difficult to report on progress in affordable housing delivery, although perhaps surprisingly the Welsh Government managed to slightly overspend their allotted budget: £223 million was allocated for 2020/21 and £228 million actually spent.

In Northern Ireland, the target under the Social Housing Development Programme is based on starts, aiming to achieve 1,850 annually. Delivery over the last two financial years has shown some remarkable peaks and troughs, with starts falling to only 761 in 2019/20 but shooting up to 2,403 in 2020/21. Unusually, 70% of this record level was achieved in the last quarter of the year, presumably reflecting a large backlog of work which eventually began as the pandemic eased.

Read more in UK Housing Review.

Stamp duty: Another boost for homeowners at expense of first-time buyers Professor Mark Stephens highlights the dysfunctional way property is taxed, in an extract from the latest UK Housing Review.

“Foolishly, considerable numbers of people pushed house prices up still higher in their rush to secure the extra income tax relief, despite the fact that this could not possibly recompense them for the excessive price they were having to pay for the house in the first place.”

So wrote Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1988, at the high point of Margaret Thatcher’s third and final administration.

Lawson sought to apply economic principles to taxation, and the anomalous situation whereby an unmarried couple could receive two lots of mortgage interest relief on the same property was an obvious target for reform.

The problem was that four months were needed after the announcement to reprogramme the computers, giving would-be purchasers both the time and motive to beat the deadline. The impetus to the housing market fed back into wider economic overheating – interest rates doubled and the housing market crashed, leading to the arrears and repossessions crisis of the early 1990s.

Economists coined the term ‘frenzy’ to describe the housing market in 1988. Wind forward more

18

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

than 30 years, and little seemed to have been learned from Lawson’s debacle when chancellor Rishi Sunak introduced stamp duty relief in July 2020. In 2021, as buyers rushed to beat the 30 June deadline before the relief was cut and then finally withdrawn in September, terms such as ‘supercharged’, ‘wild west’ and – yes – ‘frenzy’ were used to describe the market.

The concession was introduced in extraordinary circumstances: emerging from the first lockdown, for a time construction sites were closed and house sales effectively frozen. The Treasury’s Jobs Plan suggested that the measure was “crucial to ensure medium-term confidence in the property market and maintain the growing momentum since the easing of lockdown”. It pointed to the beneficial effects of transactions on housebuilding and on the stimulus arising from people moving house.

The concession has certainly stimulated the market. Housebuilders reported handsome profits as house prices rose by 13.4% year-on-year in June 2021. According to the Nationwide index, the average house price was £29,500 higher than in June 2020 – that’s almost twice the notional maximum value of the tax concession in England.

Of course, the market hasn’t been boosted by stamp duty alone. Pent-up demand was released, and mortgage interest rates fell to record lows.

Year-on-year percentage change in UK house prices Source: Nationwide

After some initial restrictions in mortgage availability (partly caused by administrative constraints as workforces adapted to home working), high loan-to-value mortgages became widely available, especially after April/May 2021.

Whilst definitive assessments will have to wait for the dust to settle, an initial diagnosis suggests that the tax concession was unnecessary to get the market moving again and extending its duration by three months in England and Northern Ireland was unwise (in Wales and Scotland the relief ended in March).

Further, the experience of previous experiments with stamp duty holidays in the early 1990s and after the global financial crisis suggests that the imminence of the withdrawal of the concession creates a temporary boost to the market. Higher house-price inflation in May/June 2021 suggests that this pattern has been repeated (see chart). The uncertainty is whether the momentum carries forward as the concession is withdrawn – market professionals predict bumper sales in July and August, but early evidence from Scotland shows that prices dipped there after the concession lapsed.

The distributional effects of measures taken to support the housing market are nonetheless clear.

They’ve boosted prices to the benefit of existing owners at the expense of first-time buyers. One would-be first-time buyer, complaining of sellers

demanding higher prices even after an initial offer had been accepted, accused the chancellor of “doing the equivalent of lobbing an extra Molotov cocktail onto a raging inferno for good measure” by extending stamp duty relief.

All of this highlights the dysfunctional nature of the housing market and of the ways in which land and property are taxed. Virtually all experts believe that stamp duty is a bad tax because it creates a disincentive for people to move, but its yield is such that it’s difficult to see governments surrendering it. It also falls on a relatively small number of households in any year. Ideally, stamp duty and council tax would be replaced with a recurrent tax, based on current land or property values. But this, too, is a path which governments are loath to take, as the numbers of losers would be significant.

Evidence newsletter editor: Dr Janis Bright www.hqnetwork.co.uk email: evidence@hqnetwork.co.uk  follow us on twitter @hqn_news

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

19

ADVERTORIAL

Resurrecting that feeling of belonging Jon Land, Head of External Relationships at HQN Building on the ambitions of the Social Housing White Paper, we recognised that the Resident Voice Index™ had huge potential to become an accurate, nationwide barometer of resident sentiment.

It’s fair to say some of the results from the first RVI survey, which focused on neighbourhoods and communities, make for stark, if not particularly surprising, reading as they reflect the general direction of travel for the social housing sector over the past 10 years or so.

Despite nearly half of residents (46%) saying they care about belonging to their neighbourhood, it’s disappointing that 84% of respondents don’t believe their housing provider improves their sense of community. This is quite alarming and raises the fundamental question: what’s the purpose of a social landlord?

Without getting too much into government policy, the need to ‘build, build, build’ became top priority; the housing regulator was told to refocus on viability and value for money rather than consumer standards, with a focus on the ‘core business’ of property rather than people. Mergers became the order of the day, leading to landlords covering larger geographic areas and becoming more detached from their communities.

If you then throw in the four-year rent cut and the detrimental effect this had on community investment programmes (amongst other things), it’s perhaps unsurprising residents feel the way they do.

Of course, how people feel about their community can’t solely be attributed to the role of their housing provider. The key elements seen as crucial to a sense of neighbourhood safety – community policing, street lighting, and CCTV – are the responsibility of other agencies. There’s also a significant proportion of residents who have no interest in belonging to a community no matter how much a housing association or local authority tries to make it happen.

It’s also interesting to note that this sense of belonging has been in decline across all parts of the UK in the last couple of years – but there’s no doubt that it’s more apparent in communities where social housing is the dominant tenure. Of course, Covid-19 is likely to have had a major impact but at the same time the lockdown period saw a concerted effort by social housing providers and other local agencies to become more visible and refocus on frontline service provision. The question is whether this continues.

Another cause for optimism is community investment becoming more of a priority for social landlords. The ability to measure social value in quantifiable terms has definitely helped as it ticks the all important ‘value for money’ box.

However, the Neighbourhoods & Communities survey suggests housing providers have their work cut out in convincing residents they’re a force for good in their area. From a survey of nearly 4,000 residents, an overwhelming majority struggled to give an example of a positive community contribution their landlord had made. Whether this is a fair reflection or not is beside the point – there’s either a major communication/engagement issue or, for whatever reason, social housing providers are simply not seen in a positive light, as reflected by a lot of the findings and recommendations set out in the White Paper.

Improving how residents feel about their neighbourhoods and communities shouldn’t be that difficult. Yes, it’ll require effort and commitment on behalf of the housing provider and a willingness to work in partnership with others such as the police and local authorities.

But much of it boils down to getting the basics right – listening to residents, having a relationship built on trust, and co-creating with the community, not just doing stuff on their behalf that they have no say in.

Communities cannot be created overnight – it requires long-term commitment. Some of the most disillusioned residents are younger people and the survey points to the fact that if we can start to engage better and do more for them, it’ll help the landlord-resident relationship in the long run.

20

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

THE HOMELESSNESS EQUATION With winter coming, St Mungo’s CEO Steve Douglas sits down with Mark Lawrence to talk through the past 18 months – what he’s learned, the observations he’s made, and what needs to be done to make greater strides in the future.

Steve Douglas career so far

• CEO at Housing Corporation • Chair at One Housing • Vice Chair at Optivo • Founder and CEO at Altair • Executive Regeneration Director at LB Hackney • Awarded a CBE for services to housing in 2019

22

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

After being in the social housing sector for But since the pandemic, the government over 30 years, it’d be safe to assume that has almost distanced itself from the when Steve Douglas joined St Mungo’s in July policy, saying it wasn’t a policy at all. But 2020, there were probably few surprises. organisations such as St Mungo’s are keen to But joining during the pandemic, Douglas ensure the positive lessons from the initiative says the response he saw from the staff and are not lost and so asked Lord Bob Kerslake volunteers was “awe inspiring”. to chair a commission on the topic.

And when reflecting on the past 15 months, Twenty-one people, from parliamentarians he says he was surprised by “the disconnect and homelessness sector professionals to between the housing association sector and those with lived experience and working the homelessness sector”. in public health, were part of the advisory “What did surprise me was that there board, and it made many recommendations was a language in the homelessness sector for ensuring that positive collaborative that wasn’t understood by the housing action could be taken forward. association sector. And the housing But, despite the commission, and the fact association sector didn’t that many bodies have understand what the backed it, Douglas fears homelessness sector did.

“I have a fear that even it won’t be supported by “I was surprised that government. though government not everyone knew the “I have a fear that even said this is a manifesto size and scale of the work though government commitment to end that St Mungo’s do. said this is a manifesto “One of the good things commitment to end rough sleeping by I’ve seen over the past 18 rough sleeping by 2026, that a response months is the housing 2026, that a response like the universal associations have this like the universal constant conversation credit cut doesn’t credit cut doesn’t about their ‘purpose’. indicate government indicate government “I’ve seen that will take forward that will take forward that reconnection from commitment. commitment” housing associations “However, we now have with that social purpose: Michael Gove as the new investing in tenancy sustainment, evictions secretary of state with a levelling up agenda as the last possible option, supporting and rough sleeping and homelessness under foodbanks, employment initiatives, that department. If you’re going to level up and working harder to get tenants into you start with those who are poorest and employment.” most vulnerable in society.

One of the main planks of homelessness “You can’t deliver on levelling up unless policy during the pandemic was the Everyone you address some of the systemic challenges In campaign, credited with saving people’s that there are for those people who are lives and showing that if the political will was homeless, at risk of homelessness, or rough there, rough sleeping could be ended. sleeping.”

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

23

“The next two to three years is going to be tough for the six million tenants that housing associations house. How housing associations respond to that will define their relationship with tenants but also their reputations more broadly. The next couple of years will be defining for housing associations” Kerslake Commission recommendations

• The government, through its new Inter-Ministerial Group on rough sleeping, should set out its overarching vision, by developing a longer-term rough sleeping strategy which builds on the successes of Everyone In and the lessons learnt, and that this group should report annually on its performance

• The

£20-a-week universal credit uplift should be maintained

• Increasing

joint working by all agencies and organisations involved with homelessness by extending the Homelessness Reduction Act’s Duty to Refer, to make it a Duty to Collaborate with relevant public agencies, including health, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Ministry of Justice

• Ensuring

that the quality of accommodation provided to those who are homeless and vulnerable is safe, decent, and appropriate, by introducing a quality assurance framework for homelessness accommodation, with a national register that requires evidence that providers are meeting minimum standards as a condition of registration

• Helping

to ensure non-UK nationals who are sleeping rough, or at risk of doing so, have some protection, by establishing a clear policy position that limiting access to benefits for non-UK nationals should stop short of causing destitution

• Reducing

the reliance on communal shelters through local authorities, in partnership with homelessness organisations, by improving planning in relation to extreme cold, severe heat, and other emergencies, and the provision for people sleeping rough during these times

24

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

And Douglas has every right to be fearful. The universal credit uplift was cut on the same day furlough ended; gas prices are rising rapidly; and we’ve not yet felt the direct impact of the evictions ban ending.

As we enter the winter months, where pressures are traditionally more harsh, how does Douglas envisage the future?

“I’m expecting the pressures to be tough but the response can be effective. We saw that last year. We saw a response in the space of 12 months that showed a 37% decrease in street homelessness.

“The ingredients are there, even though the pressures are greater. The question is about whether government responds, and responds appropriately, knowing what can be done.

“If the response is there, I have no doubt that the homelessness sector will act accordingly. The ingredients are there.”

He also had some advice for housing associations as they move out of the pandemic.

“The next two to three years is going to be tough for the six million tenants that housing associations house. How housing associations respond to that will define their relationship with tenants but also their reputations more broadly.

The next couple of years will be defining for housing associations.”

As Douglas has already mentioned, with Michael Gove in charge of the ship at the newly named Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, it remains to be seen how that impacts the response to homelessness.

And with Douglas’ knowledge and experience of the sector, he shouldn’t be surprised to be on his second secretary of state already.

But how did he rate Robert Jenrick?

“Jenrick has made a statement at the Conservative Party conference that I think will have saddened many in the homelessness sector. He referred to the ‘shame’ that the party should regard itself in its response to rough sleeping.

“The reason that saddens me is that he was the secretary of state that had responsibility for rough sleeping. It didn’t recognise the success of Everyone In, it didn’t recognise the hard work of so many in the sector, and it didn’t recognise the hard work of his rough sleeping minister,

who knows through his own work what can be done.

“It also didn’t recognise the work of his department officials, who were out there providing advice to local government and housing organisations on what could be done.

“James Brokenshire, who sadly recently died, was an example of a secretary of state that absolutely gets the brief and is genuinely committed to making a difference. The universal sadness there has been throughout the sector shows the high regard he was held in.”

And moving onto Gove, Douglas says he has an “opportunity” with the levelling up portfolio to “make his mark” on the manifesto commitment to end rough sleeping.

He adds: “I’m hopeful that Michael Gove as the new secretary of state will stay around for a few years and give his department in government the encouragement and support that’s needed to really engage with the rough sleeping and homelessness agenda.”

So, there’s hope there for Douglas that Gove and the DLUHC may interlink homelessness

and levelling up. But while the policy landscape looks bleak at the moment, pressures can build quickly and the fall out from the universal credit uplift cut and evictions ban ending could yet force a u-turn.

The final question asked of Douglas was around how he views the future and what he’d do if he had a magic wand.

“I’m hopeful that Michael Gove as the new secretary of state will stay around for a few years and give his department in government the encouragement and support that’s needed to really engage with the rough sleeping and homelessness agenda” Asked to keep it realistic, he’s typically pragmatic.

“The immediate thing is to keep the lifeline, the universal credit uplift, which will have the biggest impact on those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness over the next two years. The evictions ban will start to flow through in the next couple of years. The plans to repeal Section 21.

“If it does that, it’ll give tenants greater security. Housing associations need to step up and provide accommodation and continue the work they do around tenancy sustainment. Also helping tenants into jobs, where that’s an issue.

“Then it’s about that collaboration. If that philosophy is taken forward, then I’ll be optimistic that we can make a difference.

If we revert back to silos and our own interests, then I think we’ll have missed the opportunity.

“That’ll be tragic for the change we can make but, more importantly, it’ll be disastrous for many thousands of people that need the support of those working in the sector.”

Getting all the bits of the puzzle working together sounds like it should be easy, but has so far alluded the efforts to end homelessness and rough sleeping. A combined and consistent approach is the answer, but will government give Douglas and his colleagues the tools in which to implement this strategy?

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

25

BALANCING THE BOOKS As the sector’s finances become more squeezed and under greater scrutiny than ever, Mark Lawrence looks at what housing associations and local authorities are doing to balance the competing demands on their finances.

26

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

A

look at the latest quarterly report into the sector’s finances by the Regulator of Social Housing, and you wouldn’t believe it had a problem.

Agreed total debt and undrawn facilities increased in the quarter, with new finance agreed standing at £2.4bn.

The figures showed available cash balances of £6.5bn within the sector and cash and undrawn facilities total £34.5bn, sufficient to cover forecast expenditure on interest costs (£3.4bn), loan repayments (£3.9bn), and net development (£15.9bn) for the next year.

But despite this money going around the sector, housing providers are warning that they need grants to build social housing and they need funding to undertake repairs, maintenance, and decarbonisation works.

So, what’s the reality? And how do housing providers juggle competing demands and risks they’ve not discovered yet?

For years, the sector has been criticised for large surpluses and high executive wages, which many in housing have said are justified.

But when ITV News’ investigation shone a light onto the terrible conditions some tenants are living in, the argument around surpluses and pay reared its head again.

It’s caused a sea change in how housing providers approach repairs and maintenance, not wanting to be the next exposed by the national media. Many press releases have been sent out setting out where funding is going.

And the regulator itself has been strong on the issue of investment vs new homes.

In her address to Housing 2021, CEO Fiona MacGregor said: “The notion that the sector cannot deliver on building safety and stock improvement as well as delivering new supply appears to be an overly stark dilemma.

“However, in the current debate about funding new social housing supply there is some confusion between financing and economics. There’s no shortage of finance, and most providers have the capacity to raise more debt. Too often we see socalled ‘innovative solutions’ trying to solve a problem that does not currently exist.

“There’s no shortage of available capital, but the difficult economic problem is generating sufficient return on that capital from sub-market rents whilst paying market prices for land and development.

“The recent Affordable Homes Programme announcement will clearly help with the economic conundrum to some extent, but our review of business plans shows how the desirable and necessary investment in new supply and existing homes can gradually erode the financial and economic capacity of providers; which is leading some to try and find other ways to fund their business plans.”

So, the regulator doesn’t expect providers to prioritise new development over existing homes and it certainly doesn’t buy the argument of one or the other. But is it that straightforward?

Ian Parker, HQN Finance Lead, said it’s not just about generating headlines such as “make a 6% reduction in operating costs”.

He said: “Too many stress plans start by

“There’s no shortage of finance, and most providers have the capacity to raise more debt. Too often we see so-called ‘innovative solutions’ trying to solve a problem that does not currently exist”

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

27

reducing the development programme as a short-term plan. However, if organisations take that into account in the long term, those new homes will generate a revenue stream and have a capital value.

“Mitigation action plans need to be detailed.”

Another battle for finance teams is that development is no longer a straightforward option.

When cross subsidy was seen as the saviour for many, it was when materials were affordable and in plentiful supply. That’s no longer the case.

The wait for bricks is, in some cases, well over 20 weeks, and the cost of materials has seen normal jobs that would’ve previously cost £20,000, now costing closer to £30,000.

Margins were already fine on the cross-subsidy model, but now housing associations and local authorities are finding it harder to make it stack up.

“We will not be slowing down our programme of retrofit as this is essential for our customers, but we will be looking for greater efficiencies” Add into this the uncertainty of the housing market, and many providers have indicated it’s a serious worry for them.

Then consider the materials shortage and the need to retrofit many homes to make them net zero by 2050 (or 2035 if the goalposts are to change): once again, the challenge becomes slightly more difficult.

Sovereign Housing Association estimate that every year they’ll be paying £50m to reach net zero by 2035. Other estimates by housing associations have been higher.

One organisation looking closely at the decarbonisation agenda and the impact on finances is Platform Housing Group.

28

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

Rosemary Farrar, Chief Finance Officer at Platform, talks through her concerns and how the organisation is dealing with the potential risks.

She says: “The next two years were always going to be challenging for Platform. We’re planning to deliver our board’s objective of retrofitting our existing housing stock by 2028 at the same time as building 2,000 much-needed new homes a year.

“We modelled this strategy early in 2021 and have already had to make allowances for the post-covid effect on voids and maintenance catch-up, which we’re covering with efficiencies in working practices and procurement.

“Now we’re adding the effect of Brexit on costs and supply chain and the increases in NIC and pension contributions.

“We will not be slowing down our programme of retrofit as this is essential for our customers, but we will be looking for greater efficiencies.”

The other large cost many housing associations and local authorities are grappling with is building safety. While much has been done to help those in private blocks, many in the social sector have complained that the Building Safety Fund doesn’t stretch to them, forcing them to use budgets from other areas.

In a separate interview, Kate Henderson of the National Housing Federation told HQM that they’re pressing hard on the issue: “We’re concerned that if there isn’t money available for social landlords, that, unfortunately, money landlords receive in social rent will have to be diverted away from other planned investments in existing homes or building new affordable homes, and into remediation.

“There are very real consequences, and we’re having those discussions with government.

“Investing in building safety is nonnegotiable and we have to ensure all

“With the increasing pressure on business plans and uncertainty around costs, particularly for decarbonisation and fire safety, it’s important to start conversations early with lenders if forecasted costs could impact on financial covenants”

buildings are safe. Unless government provides money for the social housing sector, that money will have to come from other places.”

Building safety and decarbonisation are two of the biggest costs housing has ever had to face, but that’s not all for asset management budgets. Throw in the issues around the standard of social homes, and the equation becomes even more complex.

Pictures from the ITV News documentary Surviving Squalor put the sector in a bad light, and a subsequent report by the Good Home Inquiry found that two million homes in England pose a “serious threat to health or safety”.

With a consumer standards regulatory regime soon coming into force, housing providers and councils need to look at these issues now, before they get downgraded by a proactive regulatory regime.

So, how does the sector go about funding all of this? In short, it’s not simple.

With the end of both the universal credit uplift and furlough last month, the sector is starting to see the impact on unemployment and finances. Many are already predicting arrears to spike, meaning less money going into the housing accounts.

And with little to no funding seemingly forthcoming from new housing secretary Michael Gove, it seems that housing will have to find new ways to make the sums add up. As Farrar stated earlier, “we will be looking for greater efficiencies”.

That’s why it’s becoming increasingly important that boards stress test business plans to the extremes.

Ian Parker explains: “Stress testing isn’t just a regulator requirement, it’s also a business requirement. You need to identify the issues that could prevent you from delivering services to your customers.

“Good risk management leads to good stress testing.”

The other route is external finance from lenders. Louise Leaver, a specialist in housing finance at Bevan Brittan, says conversations with lenders need to start early.

“With the increasing pressure on business plans and uncertainty around costs, particularly for decarbonisation and fire safety, it’s important to start conversations early with lenders if forecasted costs could impact on financial covenants.

“To prepare for those conversations, it’s important to have as much data as possible to back up any request for a carve-out from covenants.

“It’s difficult to predict exact costs, given changing legislation and regulation as well as new technologies, and therefore it’s important to build in as much flexibility as possible, whilst giving lenders comfort that the figures are realistic.”

The next few years will be tricky for housing associations and local authorities, with little wriggle room and more pressures than ever before. But with strong business plans, proactive work from teams to ensure arrears don’t spiral, and tenants supported to keep arrears low, there may just be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

29

THE INNOVATION GAME From asset management to resident engagement and from customer contact centre to payments, the sector needs to get back to basics to improve its service to residents. Mark Lawrence finds out how technology can help play a part in that renewed focus.

30

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

W

hen talking about technology, the debate often gets hijacked by words such as ‘innovation’ and

‘gadgets’.

But while many dream of being the lead spy in a thriller, most people want their homes to simply work effectively and for their lives to be as stress free as possible.

Much of the technology that’s arrived in the sector, from the Internet of Things to artificial intelligence, has been wrapped up in this innovation bracket, without explaining how it makes residents’ lives better and how it allows organisations to get the basics right.

Getting the basics right has never been more important – with big questions around stock condition and tenant satisfaction – and technology should be used to help this where possible.

One of the ways in which technology can be used effectively to improve the lives of residents is through the customer contact centre. It’s here that residents get a sense of how the organisation operates and if it deals with a query or complaint in a satisfactory manner.

More often that not, long waiting times and archaic processes mean residents are left frustrated and their complaints unresolved.

Kitty Hadaway, Futr AI, explains how housing can use technology in those contact centres to improve service.

She says: “There’s a shift in how people access services from social landlords and the increasing volume and complexities of demands means that existing IT infrastructure isn’t adequate.

“Artificial intelligence (AI) can provide rapid, accessible answers to a multitude of common queries and comments, which frees up time spent on repeated enquiries and also helps residents access information instantaneously.

“Social housing in the 21st century needs a modern approach and, while budget constraints often prevent a full digital overhaul, AI solutions can bridge the gap and help social landlords offer their residents a higher quality of service on time and within budget”

“This in turn creates better sentiment among residents, as they no longer need to wait in phone queues for information or to book in repairs.

“Social housing in the 21st century needs a modern approach and, while budget constraints often prevent a full digital overhaul, AI solutions can bridge the gap and help social landlords offer their residents a higher quality of service on time and within budget.”

Talk of AI and chatbots sparks debate in housing about not losing the human touch to communications with residents, and the importance of keeping this personal approach to ensure better engagement and satisfaction.

Those who favour a blend of automation and human communication say it saves the organisation money and diverts help to those who either really need it or who are unable to use automated services.

This is something that Yorkshire Housing’s Chief Executive, Nick Atkin, believes in.

He says: “Even as a self-confessed tech geek, I’d be the first to confess that digital should only be seen as an enabler. Too many still view it with scepticism or trepidation.

As an enabler, digital is the key to unlock an enhanced customer service offer.

“This could be self-service that meets changing customer expectations whilst also releasing resources to provide more intensive tenancy support for those who need it. Or smart home tech that enables us to manage our homes more effectively as well as providing a much better customer service offer.

“Digital is the foundation for any housing association – alongside people and finance.

It’s time for this Cinderella service to come out of the shadows and step into the glass slipper.”

This blended approach has been successful for many in terms of taking payments, especially with universal credit being mostly online.

These themes chime with how technology can help asset management teams, with operatives already undergoing video inspections to easily and quickly assess the situation before going to the property.

This allows teams to prepare properly for the job and ensure they have the correct tools, as well as getting tenants seen to faster.

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

31

But housing can go further, according to housing professionals. Speaking in a previous edition of this magazine at a Mobysoft roundtable, the idea of “tracking my operative” was floated, much like people expect to be able to do with an online delivery.

There was also talk of using technology to “be proactive about repairs” and sending updates of where the process is at, like companies such as Amazon do, instead of “residents chasing us around”.

But asset management is about far more than repairs and this part of the sector has never been so critical to the future of housing, with decarbonisation putting immense pressure on an already underfunded department, as well as renewed focus on the condition of homes after the ITV News investigation into poor-quality social housing.

So, how can technology help in this department? One way is through better data on the homes that housing providers and local authorities own and manage.

Steve Ellard, Director of Assets and Sustainability at Yorkshire Housing, says data is a fundamental part of asset management.

“How organisations use, update, and scrutinise that data is what sets them apart.

How they use it to make decisions, forecast, and plan investment work is crucial to the viability of the organisation.

“The data can be excellent and collected by incredibly experienced surveyors but there are many instances in our sector where the systems which hold and report this data are simply not good enough.

“A good system makes data collection simple, survey planning a breeze, reporting reliable, and, perhaps most importantly, offers cross referencing multiple data sets as core functionality.

“Asset management teams have some monumental challenges over the next decade. The technology you adopt to assist you in delivering on your objectives is imperative.

“Whether we like it or not, technology is at the heart of our business ambitions. To get the basics right, the technology needs to be up to the task. And from there, you have a perfect platform on which to meet these challenges head on. Good technology, supported by good data integrity is the key

32

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

“Even as a self-confessed tech geek, I’d be the first to confess that digital should only be seen as an enabler. Too many still view it with scepticism or trepidation” to efficiently navigating net zero, Decent Homes 2 and building safety.”

Some other initiatives that housing associations and local authorities have used to help with energy efficiency and fuel poverty include insulation and smart thermostats. Are these flashy gadgets or vital technology ensuring a basic need to provide a warm, secure, and affordable home is met?

One of those is Q-Bot, which provides under floor insulation by using a device that resembles a remote-controlled car.

In a pilot study with the London Borough of Camden, Q-Bot’s solution reduced the heat loss through the floor by 77%, cold draughts across the whole house by 32%, and was the most cost-effective solution available, after loft insulation.

And in homes where the use of Q-Bot is particularly effective, households will be able to save on average £110 a year in a gas-heated home or £255 in an electrically-heated home, the study found.

“Good technology, supported by good data integrity is the key to efficiently navigating net zero, Decent Homes 2 and building safety” Another initiative is smart thermostats.

When Flagship Homes installed 20,000 in their homes, they found savings of up to 17% could be made. The technology is simple, using data to see when energy needs to be used or not, stopping the waste of overheating a home and the health repercussions of underheating.

James Hudson, Assistant Director of Commercial Strategy and Growth, says these initiatives are what’s needed in housing, not projects where organisations “get too far ahead of themselves”.

He says: “I can see the important role technology will play in solving problems in our sector, especially as we work towards net carbon zero targets.

“However, I think we need to look at how technology can help us solve the basics before we get too far ahead of ourselves. Before the design innovation brings us the smart, economical, environmentally efficient home on mass, our existing stock needs some real technological innovation and embracement to address the basics such as condensing boilers, thermostatic radiator valves, and double/secondary glazing.”

Another area that can be bolstered by technology is resident engagement.

Already in this feature, the debate around human interaction or AI chatbots has been discussed. But the pandemic showed that using technology, such as Zoom and Teams

or videos for people to watch wherever and whenever they could, meant organisations were able to reach more of their residents.

This comes back to Nick Atkin’s point around technology being an enabler. The very minimum a housing provider should be doing is providing a good service to residents and engaging with them, when they want to be. This use of technology allows more residents’ voices to be heard and an ability to co-produce policies and services that’ll change the lives of residents and benefit the organisation.

And this use of putting the customer first chimes with how Kate Lindley, Service Lead – Digital and Data at Socitm Advisory, sees the role of technology in improving services.

She says: “While there are some great technological solutions out there, to avoid future ‘technical debt’ or approaches that increase complexity rather than reduce it, it’s critical that in thinking about how best to leverage emerging technologies, housing providers do so in a way that ensures joined up service for customers – and that seeks to lay solid and sustainable foundations rather than becoming distracted by ‘shiny things’.

“As housing faces more of a burning platform to be efficient and customer focused, the opportunities to use technology are almost endless.”

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

33

COMMENT

Resident feedback: Can you afford to overlook it?

Piers Alington, Feedback Ferret

Text analytics works by collating large amounts of information from various feedback channels, digesting the data and delivering insightful reports that you can use straight away to take action.

Sort complex statements into themes, topics, and sentiment to understand where there are fundamental problems.

By employing billions of sector-relevant keywords and contextual phrases, text analytics can identify Are housing associations really doing everything they feedback that represents a significant hazard – for can to protect and support their residents? Are critical example, where both ‘asthma’ and ‘mould’, or ‘elderly’ issues being identified and resolved at the speed they and ‘trip hazard’ appear in the same comment. It also should be? recognises misspellings, sarcasm, slang and a huge With the imminent introduction of new health and amount of variants that can be easily overlooked safety regulations, housing professionals can’t afford when conducting a manual search. to be on the back foot.

Additionally, text analytics allows you to identify The sector must deliver the levels of service residents vulnerabilities in residents, alerting you to new both want and need. And medical conditions so you they must do it now. can improve customer care Luckily, you already have “Analysing feedback is and update your records. the main ingredient you But an exceptional time-consuming and often need to improve your service customer experience is just inefficient. It’s almost levels: resident feedback. one benefit of using text impossible for humans to Every day your residents analytics. share their worries and By categorising feedback extract and categorise the concerns with you. you’ll start to see trends myriad issues often covered But how closely are you that can help you plan for within a single comment, listening to them? the future, prevent minor Analysing feedback concerns from mushrooming especially when there are is time-consuming and into significant problems, thousands of comments to often inefficient. It’s almost and even save you money. sort through” impossible for humans to These insights will shine a extract and categorise the light on systematic contractor myriad issues often covered within a single comment, failings, faulty appliances, unreliable tradespeople, especially when there are thousands of comments to and issues occurring in certain buildings or areas. sort through.

For example, a client using Feedback Ferret’s text Subtleties can therefore be overlooked, and crucial analysis solution said: “We noticed a spike in the number red flags along with them. of complaints about repairs in boilers and heating Mould in a flat is something that needs to be systems – they were repeatedly breaking down. Using addressed but it might not shoot to the top of your text analytics and our own metadata, we identified that priority list. these were in the same property block. So, rather than However, when there’s a child with breathing continue to pay for ongoing repairs, we decided to difficulties living in that flat it becomes a category 1 replace the whole set of boilers with new ones.” hazard and immediate action is required.

Listening effectively is key to overcoming so many Don’t leave it to chance. Make sure you’re on top of the issues housing associations and their residents of the most pressing concerns for your residents and face. your organisation by employing text analytics.

Can you afford to overlook it?

34

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

Your Local Pantry Stockport take home ‘Team of the year’ The team won the award for providing local people with an affordable food offer whilst they were shielding or self-isolating. The team also set up a delivery service during the pandemic, to enable the service to reach more vulnerable customers that may not have been accessing the pantry previously.

Your Local Pantry, part of Foundations Stockport, is a network of member – run community food stores, set up to help reduce grocery costs for Stockport residents who are struggling financially. Your Local Pantry provides dignity, choice and hope to an average of 374 households per week and are volunteer-led, ran by the community for the community.

COMMENT

How chatbots help improve the fundamentals of customer service Scott Summers, Chief Executive, FuzzLab

Can you remember a time you had an excellent customer service experience? What was it that made it so good?

experience, particularly when a customer is forced to hold in between. Frustration increases when a customer needs to re-authenticate or repeat their issue. Because chatbots can be trained to deal with a broad range of topics, there’s less need to transfer.

However, as chatbots aren’t great at dealing with complex issues, it’s good practice to have the ability to escalate to live-chat. Fortunately, the transcript from a chatbot conversation can be passed to the human agent so that the transition is seamless and doesn’t negatively impact the customer.

Immediate service

Whenever I call customer service and I’m told “Our wait times are longer than usual, but your call is important to us,” my blood boils. After all, whenever I phone a sales department, my call gets picked up immediately. Responding quickly is fundamental to good service and because there’s no wait time with a chatbot conversation, customers often feedback positively after using a virtual agent. What’s more, enabling customer self-service and reducing call volumes through a chatbot improves service quality for those who prefer to phone.

Service wherever I am, whenever I need it

While issues such as ASB and repairs aren’t confined to 9 to 5, it’s rare that contact centres are open 24/7.

Wouldn’t it be good to have service capability 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? While chatbots can’t handle all customer issues (a good chatbot should be aiming for around 70%), customers can initiate the support process and log a call back request any time of day.

Customers feel they’ve been attended to immediately.

Moreover, different people prefer to communicate on different channels and a good chatbot can be available across all of them. If your customers prefer to use WhatsApp, the chatbot can be there. Same for Facebook Messenger, your website, and SMS.

Escalations and transfers

Sometimes, when an agent needs to transfer a call to another agent, it can diminish the customer

36

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

Reliable and rich information

Queries often need detailed information to resolve them. To provide consistently good customer experience, companies rely on their contact centre staff having broad, deep, up-to-date knowledge on a range of topics. The amount of training needed is impractical and the ability to retain this information virtually impossible. Chatbots, when implemented well, can be trained to have almost limitless levels of knowledge and reference material which can be provided to customers immediately – and in any language. Customers might need to have the information written down so they can absorb it at their own pace. Because chatbots can provide links to webpages, then send this to customers after the conversation, customers get exactly what they need and can refer to it when they want.

Empathy and an emotional response

An emotional, empathic response is probably the most important factor in providing excellent service for complex problems – and chatbots can’t do this.

Chatbots will make customer service become more human, more emotional, more personal. This may seem paradoxical but by letting the computer do the things they’re good at, it frees up the humans to spend more time with the residents that need them most. Training can be focussed on the things that really matter: building trust, listening skills, and emotional intelligence – and this is how chatbots will help providers improve the fundamentals of customer service.

COMMENT

Local authorities can take back control with leadingedge digital solutions Nathan Ollier, Vice President, Public Sector and Field Service, Advanced

council locations; and from the field.

The ability to quickly and easily redeploy staff in a dynamic and agile way is critical for efficient field service management, getting the highest number of jobs completed in the shortest time and for the lowest cost.

Dynamic resource scheduling (DRS) software allows local authorities and other organisations to plan The continuing challenges of Covid-19 and the and manage field-based work, optimising available aftermath of Brexit may be putting unprecedented employees – essential at a time when understaffed budgetary demands on local authorities. teams are also juggling last-minute absences due to However, as argued in our white paper, The Urban Covid and self-isolation.

Revival, smart local leaders are using the latest DRS accounts for the specific skills, location, technologies to make the most of a once-in-a-century and travel times of each operative, and empowers opportunity to rebuild a better, smarter, and more managers to respond immediately to unexpected sustainable future. changes and react accordingly.

The private sector has By contrast, a manuallyalready undergone massive operated system is highly digital transformation. inefficient, subject to “Digital technologies provide If they’re to be taken errors, and will always be significant time and costseriously, public sector several steps behind when saving benefits, help to bodies seeking investment accommodating sudden develop inhouse resources, partnerships need adopt changes. the same intuitive digital Digital technologies provide and bring councils in line solutions to elevate efficiency significant time and costwith modern and efficient and productivity. saving benefits, help to processes that enhance better Digital software is develop inhouse resources, also transforming the and bring councils in line delivery of public services” management of some with modern and efficient inhouse council services, processes that enhance driven partly in response to the collapse of Carillion better delivery of public services. and the opportunity for greater control.

They massively reduce paperwork and can offer In some cases, councils are seeing improved levels features such as two-way communication between of service, having removed the duplicated costs operatives and customers, reducing the incidence associated with private provider contracts. of forgotten appointments and enhancing customer The year-on-year rise in costs for responsive and satisfaction. scheduled repairs has been exacerbated by additional They can make life easier for customer-facing safety measure requirements, precipitated by the council employees, reducing sick days taken for workGrenfell Tower fire. related stress and staff churn rates.

Councils have to pursue the best value for the public Councils that embrace these new technologies may purse, and in many cases that means managing everchoose to position themselves as credible potential tighter budgets and delivery of services inhouse, using investment partners, or take services back inhouse to an efficient digital solution. maximise control and cost efficiency.

Digital software and systems provide the greatest Either way, these local authorities will be equipped flexibility for employees, allowing them to access data for the challenges of an urban revival and remain when working remotely – as many intend to do, for the buoyant, despite unpredictable and unstable foreseeable future; from any of a number of dispersed economic conditions.

38

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

COMMENT

How will the internet of things transform customer relationships?

Chris Jones, Chief Operating Officer, HomeLINK

Understanding of the potential transformative impact this technology could have on the landlordcustomer relationships first arose during in-depth interviews, carried out with approximately 100 residents to understand the acceptability and likely engagement they’d have with IoT data.

This project led to two significant outcomes for HomeLINK: the development of the resident app Social landlords are increasingly realising that the product and the beginning of an ongoing IoT ethics Internet of Things (IoT) can bring many benefits research programme. directly to their organisations, through improved It was clear during this project that IoT product maintenance efficiencies, investment optimisation, development in social housing needs to consider the and compliance. resident as much as it does the landlord.

It’s also increasingly clear there are many benefits to The HomeLINK resident app provides residents residents, including improving health, safety, with free access to their home’s data, providing and wellbeing, while also providing transparency on what data is collected opportunities to help them save and giving them important knowledge money. and insight to improve their health, This isn’t just anecdotal evidence: safety, wellbeing, and energy of social housing but it’s clearly backed up by expenditure. residents are research HomeLINK carried out There’s also a powerful win-win discouraged from with over 50 landlords. at play: as residents engage with Resident-related benefits – the app to improve their health and using IoT due to such as tackling fuel poverty and save money, they’re also improving data privacy improving living conditions and the health of their home, and concerns energy efficiency – are among those ultimately, saving the landlord money most associated with IoT adoption in through preventative maintenance. social housing.

This is not only theoretical: on a project Despite this, landlords often worry about with Wolverhampton Homes it was demonstrated resident perception if IoT were adopted. For example, that empowering residents with actionable insights led they often worry residents might reject the technology to significant improvements in mould risk, ventilation, for privacy reasons or that they could be perceived as fire safety, and more. some sort of ‘big brother’ organisation.

There are many ways in which IoT can transform The results of interviews and surveys with dozens customer relationships and these broadly fit into two of landlords and hundreds of residents showed that categories: concerns exist on both sides, particularly when it 1. Happier residents comes to privacy, data ownership, and consent.

• Improved living conditions: healthier and safer When delving into the details, however, there are • Monetary savings from targeted energy efficiency two key influences that alleviate these concerns: measures experience of the technology and trust.

• Empowered with data and insights Through engagement with residents on numerous 2. Less relationship friction projects, it’s clear they’re glad to have adopted this • Preventative maintenance – fewer reasons to visit technology after they’ve lived with it for only a short and call period of time.

• Fault transparency (e.g. likely cause of mould, Our research also indicates that those who have structural or lifestyle, is clear) greater trust in their landlords are more accepting of • Resident app engagement (e.g. appointment IoT. Trust also extends to social circles. scheduling and repairs feedback)

84%

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

39

Ombudsman Corner 40

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

By Richard Blakeway, the Housing Ombudsman

Our Complaint Handling Code places a strong emphasis on landlords learning the lessons from complaint failures. This is especially relevant where we’ve found severe maladministration. For almost a year, we have been publishing special reports on these cases and inviting landlords to share the changes they’ve made following our decisions.

Severe maladministration often involves multiple failures in service over a prolonged period of time, as well as significant delays and long periods of inaction on the part of a landlord. What also makes these cases stand apart is the high level of impact the series of events has had on a resident, who may have been left living in a stressful situation, in poor conditions, and sometimes without essential amenities.

This was particularly the case with an 83-year-old resident who complained about her faulty boiler and the landlord’s decision to cap her gas supply. While our investigation found the landlord may have found this case difficult due to problems accessing the property, its lack of action led to the resident living without heating or hot water for almost three years.

There was no evidence of the landlord attempting to visit the resident to try to resolve the matter or undertake checks into her welfare, only making contact when an annual gas inspection was due.

In this case, the wider learning included the landlord reviewing its ‘managing annual gas safety inspections’ policy to ensure its approach to elderly and vulnerable residents is appropriate and that it has satisfactory oversight of properties with a capped gas supply.

In another case, which involved flooding and extensive delays responding to the

resident’s complaint, the effectiveness of the landlord’s response was hindered by the lack of two key policies: a repairs policy to address responsibilities of the parties and timescales for repairs, and a compensation policy to address how and when it’ll consider making financial redress. The importance of robust policies, with staff understanding them, are key lessons to draw from much of our casework.

“its lack of action led to the resident living without heating or hot water for almost three years” The impact in both cases was exacerbated by poor complaint handling, and my final example reinforces the need for an effective complaint system. In this case, a disabled resident had concerns about the suitability of his adapted bathroom given his needs, and the approach taken to repairs and decanting him from the property. Alongside maladministration on the substantive issue, the landlord’s complaint handling had been poor, promoting a complaint handling failure order to be issued by us.

This included delays, refusing to escalate the case, failing to address issues raised by the resident, and its responses lacking clarity.

Notwithstanding these investigations, it’s important to point out that, overall, landlords have responded positively to our findings and, as well as taking ownership for the failures highlighted, some have gone to considerable lengths to learn from any mistakes and to improve their services for residents.

Software solutions for private and social housing landlords.

Everything you need to improve the efficiency of your property and tenant management, get greater visibility of your data and increase customer satisfaction.

Field Service Management

Procurement

Social Care

In-house Legal

HR & Payroll

Managed Services

Financial Management

Cloud Services

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

41

A day in the life of...

Shamela Khatun Specialist Coach Stonewater’s South Asian Women’s Refuge (SAWR)

Employee since: The refuge opened in 2009 Location, location, location: Bedford

Special delivery 07:30 On my way to work I drop off a foodbank parcel to a woman we’re currently supporting, and who’s waiting to hear on her application for Indefinite Leave to Remain. The solicitors we work with are brilliant at ensuring we have everything we need to support all our customers’ applications – and to date, we’ve not yet had one refused.

09:30

Any vacancies?

At the refuge, an immigration solicitor calls, asking if we have any vacancies.

Our main refuge has room for six families and our move-on refuge prepares five families for independent living. We’ve housed over 240 women and over 400 children at the refuge since it opened and one more customer is going to be moving out soon, so I tell the rest of the team we should be getting a referral which we’ll need to assess.

11:00

Mothers at the refuge I spend time with a customer who’s heavily pregnant. She was in hospital with high blood pressure over the weekend and she’s very anxious about what will happen to the baby when it’s born.

It’s such a sad case. She moved to the UK 15 years ago and up until six months ago was isolated and physically abused by her husband’s family.

Since she left her husband, she hasn’t been able to see her children. However, we’re liaising with social workers to try and arrange contact.

14:00

Empowering customers One customer has a problem with her universal credit claim. She’s had no money for two months, so we’ve organised food parcels and vouchers. Today, I’m on the phone asking for her application to be escalated.

I chat to her about how she’s feeling. She had an abusive, alcoholic husband. The police got involved and she ended up fleeing to a bed and breakfast. Within a few days of her arriving here, she heard her mum had died in India.

The women here have had to cope with so much – they have such a mix of emotions: fear, anger, guilt, and shame. A big part of our role is helping them to see how brave and strong they are, to empower them.

My perfect day House meeting I’m quite the homebody when In the afternoon we have one of our regular house meetings, not working. Days at the refuge are where we catch up and plan activities like the vegetable rewarding but can be challenging, so my garden that we started this year. time off is all about recharging. I enjoy having There’s a real sense of community at the refuge. When peace and quiet in the morning with some time someone new moves in, the women all rally round to cook for spiritual study and meditation. Afterwards, I’m a meal for them on their first day. They say we’re like a ready to grab a coffee and catch up with friends. family.

When my four children come home in the evening, we sit together in the lounge and take Knock at the door time to connect. Everyone discusses their In the evening, at home, I open the door to a delivery driver day – and I feel ready to support other with a parcel. I recognise her. She’s someone who used to live families with their challenges when at the refuge. She’s passed her driving test, got this job, and is I go back to work. enjoying her new life. It’s so lovely to see her doing so well.

16:30

18:00

42

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

Resident’s view The building safety crisis and solution

By Deepa Mistry

This building safety crisis is all about trust: leaseholders don’t trust constructors and won’t buy again; lenders don’t trust the constructors, hence EWS; and insurers don’t trust constructors, so increase insurance premiums.

The root cause is where the construction industry didn’t keep to building law at the time of construction, or if they did, government changed regulations. The lack of trust destroys consumer confidence in the property market – so the Polluter Pays Bill, as an amendment to the Building Safety Bill, is a once in a generation opportunity to reform construction to restore that trust.

Current proposals let off the guilty parties with taxes and levies, which are appealing because it doesn’t make them pay in full. Estimates of this crisis are anywhere between £15-50bn, so a £5bn government offering leaves the balance picked up by unwanted ‘forced’ leaseholder loans (that were rejected by financiers in Victoria, Australia as an unattractive proposition).

We’re very grateful for the government’s £5bn offering; however, this doesn’t cover all buildings and materials, and, through my involvement in the cladding crisis, I’ve seen many reports from leaseholders of serious defects aside from cladding (missing cavity barriers/firebreaks, installation issues, untested products) which suggests this is a widespread issue.

The Polluter Pays Bill brings in the largest amount from the widest pool of responsible parties, and goes further to provide recovery of interim costs of defective buildings and emergency grants to leaseholders in desperate need now – and, as a bonus, it provides future consumer protection,

resolving the problem for future generations.

This is the result of almost a year’s work to find a solution by Steve Day of the Royal Artillery Quays development in Woolwich, supported by other leaseholders, including myself and a team of experts such as top lawyer specialising in legislation, Daniel Greenberg. We gratefully welcome a raft of support from key industry players such as ARMA, the Mortgage Lenders Association and the Association of Mortgage Intermediaries; lords, MPs, bishops, and a former Australian politician; The Sunday Times; and campaign groups such as Grenfell United and End Our Cladding Scandal.

Lord Greenhalgh said they’re “looking very carefully as a potential amendment to the Building Safety Bill”. We’re very hopeful and welcome the opportunity for the government to do the right thing and implement the fairest solution without penalising the innocent – while restoring trust in the construction industry and leaving a lasting impression of good building and construction for future generations.

The building safety crisis hasn’t been one of my making: I haven’t laid a brick on my building yet my family and I are being made to suffer. The government’s current proposals of a developer’s levy don’t go far enough and the ‘forced’ loans to leaseholders are a form of modern day captivity.

This happened in the 80s. It’s happening now and we must stop it from happening in the future.

The only moral and just solution to this crisis is the Polluter Pays Bill amendment to the Building Safety Bill to protect us and our future generations from ever having to experience this trauma again.

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

43

Fact or Fiction: Michael Gove Boring old hacks (like yours truly) oft comment about the amount of housing secretaries the country gets through. So, I’m not going to bring it up. I’m going to be more positive: we’ve got our very first housing secretary called Michael Gove! With that out the way, here are five facts about him – except one of them isn’t. Can you detect the isn’t?

1. Hosted

4. Snorted

Gove MP hasn’t always been an MP. He began as a tiny child before growing into, sort of, adult form.

In-between these nascent and top Tory stages, he starred amongst the cast of an early 90s TV comedy show. Channel 4’s A Stab in the Dark featured Gove delivering bewildering monologues direct to camera, surrounded by a strangely stultified audience. In another skit, Gove investigated the contents of celebrities’ bins. Astonishingly, it failed, being cancelled after only one series. The show also featured David Baddiel, which really couldn’t have helped matters.

If you’ve seen the footage of Gove dancing alone in an Aberdeen nightclub you may have concluded that he has a taste for strong stimulants. And indeed, he once did, according to his very self.

The minister admitted to enjoying cocaine on “several occasions” back in the day – which could mean he did it three or four times, or every day for two years, we can’t tell. He confessed during 2019’s Tory leadership competition, claiming that “I don’t believe that past mistakes disqualify you”. And they don’t: mistake-festooned Boris Johnson took the prize, leaving the former coke-head in a distant third.

44

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

5. Ghosted Gove has a keen interest in the supernatural, a passion that was cultivated while a member of Oxford University’s Paranormal Research Society. During his role as chief whip, the ghoul fan put forward a parliamentary motion to debate the creation of a government unit for the investigation of unexplained phenomena. After no small amount of ridicule from fellow MPs and the media, Gove quietly dropped the motion. However, speaking to Fortean Times in 2015, he revealed that he’d had mystic experiences on several occasions, including a poltergeist in Hampshire, a swarm of UFOs over Fife, levitation, astral projection, automatic writing, and a confrontation with a vampire.

Photo: House of Commons

The Laird of the Dance managed to navigate the infamous MPs expenses scandal unscathed.

No, he didn’t. In the mid-00s, the recently elected Gove claimed over £7,000 for a home he bought in 2002 – with about a third of that going to a posh interior design firm owned by David Cameron’s fatherin-law. He then flipped his second home, naturally, and claimed about £13,000 for stamp duty purposes. But that wasn’t enough.

While moving house he stayed the night at a very nice hotel in Surrey, with the taxpayer picking up the £500-a-night bill. (For those of you who might be upset about this use of taxpayers’ money, I implore you: if this hadn’t happened, we may not have a housing secretary called Michael Gove. Think about it.)

Once upon a time, Gove and his ex-wife – the Daily Mail ‘journalist’ Sarah Vine – were top chums with ex-prime minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha. The flush foursome used to hang out at the likes of Chequers, laughing, eating well, and drinking merrily while the men in the equation stripped £billions from the public sector, condemning millions of Brits to avoidable hardships, and no doubt in some cases, early graves. What fun! However, even bad things must come to an end, and end they did when Brexit (or, as it’s now known, Supply Chain Issues) happened. Doing a bit of a Johnson, Gove hinted at wanting to remain, but switched to leave at the 11th hour, deeply upsetting remainer Cameron. A schism was born between the couples, leading Vine to trot out acres of trademark bilge in the pages of the Mail.

Apparently, Mike and Dave are mates again now (making up over whiskey sodas in the cigar room of 5 Hertford Street, a £2,500-a-year private members’ club, no less), so you can sleep easy.

Fiction: 5. Ghosted

2. Toasted

3. Rifted

ADVERTORIAL

Tackling fuel poverty with technology Many think fuel poverty is simply not being able to pay the heating bill. The reality is that residents who are fuel poor not only struggle to keep homes warm, but are also at risk of depression, social isolation, health problems and hunger.

Shockingly, more than 13% of UK households are living in fuel poverty, meaning millions across the nation, including the elderly and vulnerable, are unable to keep themselves warm without their disposable income dipping below the poverty line.

As we head into winter, you may be considering what you can do to help. A potential solution can be found in smart Internet of Things (IoT) technology.

IoT is a system of interconnected computers, devices, machines, objects, or people – transferring data over a network without the need for human interaction and it’s paving the way towards a world where fuel poverty no longer exists.

Invisible Systems are supporting housing associations to use IoT smart sensors to gather data which provides insight into the state of properties.

By simply placing wireless sensors within homes, you’ll suddenly have access to data on a variety of parameters, including damp, mould, condensation, air quality and energy usage.

With this kind of data readily available and in an easy-to-read dashboard, housing associations now have the power to eliminate the risk of fuel poverty.

The sensors can also signal if properties are prone to certain conditions, thus empowering landlords to take preventative action. For example, if readings show that an area of a building is likely to develop mould, you can intervene before it becomes an issue.

Housing associations can utilise data to identify areas of low energy usage and, subsequently, which homes might be underheated. This is a strong indication that tenants in these homes might be fuel poor.

Again, having access to this kind of knowledge facilitates quick action to improve the living environments of these individuals.

In addition to the advantages already mentioned, Invisible Systems IoT sensors offer several other benefits: • Invisible Systems’ online dashboard, Real-Time Online, automatically notifies of domestic temperatures drop below a safe level • By enabling predictive maintenance and alerting landlords to existing issues, IoT technology helps to transform the health and wellbeing of tenants • Sensors are non-intrusive. These wireless devices work remotely and data is compiled in Real-Time Online, so tenants are not bothered by manual inspections or repeated visits • With a wealth of information at your fingertips, you’ll enjoy easier property management and a better overview of your estates • Finally, it’s likely your customer relationships will strengthen as you improve the quality of their homes.

While fuel poverty is a distressing reality for so many people across the country, it can be avoided. By adopting smart IoT solutions, social housing landlords have the opportunity to truly make a difference to the lives of residents and the homes in which they live.

If you want to know how Invisible Systems sensors can help you to ensure a better quality of life for your tenants, book a call with our team below.

Email: info@invisible-systems.com Phone: 01539 722 520 Visit: www.invisible-systems.com

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

45

The last word Black History Month and young people

By Alysha Burrell, CIH Futures board member

“A collective effort is required by the sector to raise the profile of black role models, by tackling unconscious bias and prejudice”

46

HOUSING QUALITY MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2021

As a young black woman working in housing, it’s inspiring to see black trailblazers and role models you’re passionate about in the sector.

Despite the underrepresentation of black people in housing, from the building site to the boardroom, they’ve played an important role in shaping the direction of the industry.

Walt Braithwaite’s engineering team invented computer-aided design (CAD), with many architects now using this software to design houses.

Roni Savage founded an engineering and environmental company and is challenging the status quo as one of the few black women in the industry.

Whilst black people’s achievements should be recognised all year round, the sector can use Black History Month as an anchor to engage more young black people who’ve never thought about housing as a career.

Around 25% of the sector will be retiring in the next 10 years and from a CIH Futures perspective, the sector can only have a viable future if it attracts and trains up more young and diverse people.

CIH Futures made a Black Lives Matter commitment to renew its focus to attract specifically more young diverse people into the sector.

We’ve tried to practice what we preach by diversifying our board through fair and inclusive recruitment, and we aim to raise the profile of our young black members and all those whose voices so often go unheard.

A collective effort is required by the sector to raise the profile of black role models, by tackling unconscious bias and prejudice to ensure black employees progress and achieve their aspirations for themselves and for younger people to follow.

For me, the relevance of Black History Month is about celebrating the achievements of black history and culture, and continuing to learn, educate, and participate in the ongoing action that needs to be taken for racial equality.

Housing wealth is low for black people compared to other ethnic groups and impacts your ability to live a fulfilled life.

By innovatively engaging younger black people in the future decisionmaking of housing, and teaching young people about the role models and history of the sector, including the establishment and relevance of black and minority ethnic housing associations, it could create more inclusive communities and more young people actually choosing housing as a career.

Supporting black employees to participate in career talks at schools, colleges, and universities about what they do will be beneficial for all.

Diversity of thought and diversity of visual representation matters. If you can see it, you can believe it.

Shining a light on the black role models of today who are breaking barriers is important for young black people to believe that they can belong in an industry like housing.

Hopefully, then more young black people will be inspired to choose housing as a career and not just ‘fall into it’.

Congratulations to Stoke-on-Trent City Council for achieving HQN Maximising Income; Sustaining Tenancies (MIST) Accreditation

Gill Stead, Chair of the HQN’s accreditation panel said: “Stoke tick a lot of boxes in terms of an offer of support to residents including budgeting, benefits advice, help with building skills and knowledge, fuel poverty, furniture, digital inclusion, etc. We were particularly impressed with the initiatives to address isolation and exclusion which demonstrated some great joint-working in an area that is easily over-looked. Congratulations on your accreditation success!”

Rob Emery, Strategic Manager, Housing Management said: “We are absolutely delighted that Stokeon-Trent City Council has been recognised by the accreditation panel for the work that we do to sustain tenancies, we are honoured to have achieved the MIST accreditation. The whole process was very easy and worked very well being done remotely.”

Rob Emery, Strategic Manager with other members of the Stoke-on-Trent City Council housing management team with their accreditation award.

The HQN Accreditation mark is a visible sign your organisation not only meets or exceeds good practice standards, but is also proud to offer a best-in-class service to its tenants and residents

hqnetwork.co.uk/accreditation

Partner with us Amplify your impact and benefit from an exclusively curated partnership package.

We have flexible opportunities to suit all budgets and a dedicated partnership team who will work relentlessly to boost your marketing performance, raise your business profile, and elevate the inspiring content you have to offer.

12

specialist networks

8,000

delegates to HQN events each year

Your partnership could include: • Official sponsorship and membership of a network • Hosting best practice events, virtual or face to face with our networks

20,000 contacts

• Sponsorship of HQN conferences and speaking opportunities • Thought leadership, surveys, research, briefings, blogs, and technical notes • Test your products and services – get feedback from HQN members • Digital advertising • HQM advertising including editorials and advertorials • Marketing campaign support and engagement plan for your business

52%

of our audience is at decision making level or above Over 450 membership organisations to connect with

• Dedicated account manager who works with you to achieve your goals

Contact gemma.meeks@hqnetwork.co.uk for information about our latest opportunities

With thanks to our current partners

PARTNER