News in brief

News analysis by Mark Lawrence

Before the push

A whole year ago, back in March 2021, Daniel Hewitt and ITV News first shone a spotlight on the terrible conditions in some social housing.

Since then, there’s been a host of housing associations and local authorities shamed on national TV, with many apologies and promises of action following.

Figures recently released by the Mayor of London show that 15% of all London social housing is non-decent. That’s hundreds of thousands of homes and people’s lives. Extrapolate that out to the rest of the UK and it’s hundreds of thousands more.

Falling back on the ‘the private rented sector has more nondecent homes’ line is no moral high ground to take. The sector is only as good as its worst homes, after all.

The sector does a huge amount of good work, and this shouldn’t be allowed to get lost because some of the basics aren’t being done correctly.

If those who want the sector to be shown in a more positive light are serious, they should make sure the problems in social housing are fixed before repairing any reputational damage.

The year of the squeeze

Increasing food and fuel prices and the rising energy price cap have been well documented as being the start of ‘the year of the squeeze’.

Add in the rising inflation and increase to National Insurance payments and suddenly a lot more people who were on the edge of getting by, are no longer able to do so.

Tough decisions will be being made in households up and down the country. Unfortunately, many of these households will be living in social housing.

Many housing providers and local authorities have already committed to help, increasing resource in these areas to encourage application for all available benefits, receiving backdated benefits, helping with budgeting and much more.

There’s also the energy efficiency works happening at the moment, which will also address some of the issues around fuel poverty. These works can be a vital lift for those struggling with energy bills.

It does though once again raise the debate about rent increases. With money having to be spent elsewhere, can providers always justify an increase in rents, especially if it means forcing some of their residents further into poverty in other places?

Landlords will have to be at the top of their game when supporting residents through what’s undoubtably going to be an extremely tough time. It’ll once again show the true worth of housing associations and local authorities.

HQN will be running a special event on how to mitigate the impact of the increasing cost of living for both providers and residents. Find out more here.

Watch HQN TV for a weekly roundup of the housing news

The building safety battle

It’s been interesting watching Michael Gove vs the private sector play out in terms of the building safety debate.

Gove has made sure that during his time as housing secretary, he’s going to make his mark on building safety, and he’s certainly ruffling a few feathers.

The latest amendments to the Building Safety Bill have gone down worse than even the commentators thought, with developers branding them “draconian” and “extreme”.

They’ve warned it’ll lower the numbers of new homes built and drive SME builders out of the market. But Gove is determined… who blinks first?