The Governor - July 2017

HQN’S MAGAZINE FOR BOARDS, EXECUTIVES AND LEADERS

JULY 2017

How was this allowed to happen?

Jules Birch on the Grenfell Tower fire

General Election 2017

Where do we go from here?

Evidence

Four page research and analysis pull-out

Contents Special pull-out:

July 2017

Evidence Published by:

The latest edition of HQN’s Evidence magazine, incorporating the latest housing research and analysis from leading academics.

HQN Rockingham House St Maurice’s Road York YO31 7JA

Issue 18 | July 2017 In this issue: 1 Welcome / Too many women becoming homeless 2 Welfare Reform: The challenges ahead for policy and practice 3 Disabled people’s perspectives on welfare conditionality 4 In brief

Editorial:

EVIDENCE update

THE LATEST RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS – IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Alistair McIntosh Jon Land Jules Birch Mark Lawrence Rob Gershon Janis Bright Roger Jarman

Welcome The start of a new parliament, with a new government in place, is generally a buoyant time in politics. This time, however, the mood has been sombre, with a weakened government, terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire.

The mood is also a reaction against the years of ‘austerity’. Though social security and housing benefit have not been top political issues recently, they will form an important part of the debates to come.

In this issue, Professor Christina Beatty reflects on the

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Joanne Bretherton from the University of York comments on the first systematic attempt to bring together knowledge about women and homelessness across Europe.

Women’s homelessness is neglected. We think about homelessness, as people sleeping on the street and in emergency shelters. For many of us, our picture of homelessness is not a woman and her children, sleeping in a friend’s living room because they have nowhere else to go.

Domestic violence is not seen as a homelessness issue.

Yet women and women with their children are driven out of their homes, made homeless, by male violence.

Between 1998-2015, 66,660 households containing lone women and lone women parents were accepted as homeless due to domestic violence in England1.

For women, homelessness often means staying with someone, family, friend, or acquaintance, because there is nowhere else to go. Sofa surfing is the experience of many homeless women.

Internationally and in the UK, academic research is showing us that women react to homelessness in different ways to men. Women avoid the street, they

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EVIDENCE - 1

Cover features 5 How was this allowed to happen?

Jules Birch investigates the governance failures ‘at all levels’ that played their part in the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy while Roger Jarman calls for a revamp of the regulatory regime for social housing on the back of the disaster.

10 Where do we go from here?

Mark Lawrence looks back on a tumultuous few weeks for the housing sector and explores what the General Election result is likely to mean for future housing policy.

Visit www.hqnetwork.co.uk

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avoid emergency services which are largely filled with men, instead, they rely on the people they know. Women may sofa surf more than men and there is growing evidence they exhaust these informal arrangements before seeking formal help.

Research shows that lone homeless women are highly vulnerable. Simultaneous mental illness and addiction, high rates of domestic violence and abuse and extremely poor physical health are common. American evidence shows us that women (and men) do not start their homelessness careers with these sorts of support needs, instead such needs can result from recurrent or long-term homelessness.

The homelessness statistics, which differ between England and other parts of the UK, record people who are helped under the homelessness laws, they are not a count of all homeless people. Lone homeless adults can find it difficult to receive assistance under these laws, which focus on protecting children and a narrowly defined group of vulnerable adults. This means women without children, or who have lost contact with their children, often cannot access these systems. Because of an emphasis on homelessness prevention people are less likely to reach the point of being recorded as ‘homeless’.

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness

Have you seen our new website?

Cover photo: Jon Chiral

Janis Bright Editor Evidence

Too many women becoming homeless

Email: jon.land@hqnetwork.co.uk Tel: 07740 740417 Advertising:

recent election and on the welfare benefit cuts still in the pipeline – amounting to greater cuts than already seen. And Dr Jenny McNeill offers case studies of the difficulties faced by two disabled people trying to claim Employment and Support Allowance.

Homelessness remains a serious and growing problem in the UK, and the situation of homeless women is under-reported. For the first time researchers have put together knowledge about women and homelessness from across Europe. Dr Joanne Bretherton reports.

9 After Grenfell HQN chief executive Alistair McIntosh sets out his six-point plan for regulation following the Grenfell Tower fire.

15 The Last Word HQN’s Residents’ Network lead associate Rob Gershon says residents’ voices need to be heard in the aftermath of Grenfell and calls for an increased focus on tenant involvement, empowerment and coregulation.

Fixing our broken housing hearts “We’ve got great news for you Mr 20,000-home landlord – 76% of the 15 fire risk assessments we looked at were OK. No we didn’t actually go to the houses. But the files are tip top” We’ve got to get a shift on. The Notting Hill Carnival starts on 26 August. That’s the next time the world will descend on Grenfell. So we need to have put our house in order. Here’s what I would do.

It’s time to tell the speculators that enough is enough. We need a policy of use it or lose it in busy places. You can’t tell people in London there are no homes for them when they can see loads of empties with their own eyes. Don’t rub people’s noses in it. That will end badly. Possession of empty homes does more harm than possession of drugs. So make the punishment fit the crime. Or at least change the tax system.

We need to make safety the number one job. The law setting up the HCA didn’t make it a priority.

Sadly, the then Government wanted to put in place a Praetorian Guard to protect the lenders and to hell with everything else. To be fair the HCA has flexed what little muscles it has in this area. It put Circle and Luminus to the sword on safety. And it has warned about the dangers of chopping the repairs budget to pay for the rent cut. But it needs to do more. When they carry out an in-depth assessment they must look at safety as the number one priority.

What will they find?

There is a mixed picture. I’ve just read a report of a fire in a tower in Birmingham where everything worked as it should. Mind you, tenants were worried given what was in the news. So we can get it right. But we certainly know what

bad looks like. Stock condition surveys tell you all you need to know about net present values but nothing at all about safety. You would have thought the houses needed to be pretty much free of fire risk to be worth anything. But too often that does not enter the equation. And these risks do not make their way onto the assets and liabilities register.

Then there’s the laboriously constructed multi-coloured swap shop risk maps that couldn’t hit a barn door at five paces. They are about as much use as that weather app on your phone. If it says 0% chance of rain pack a brolly. And don’t get me started on internal audit reports done by kids with no technical knowledge. To make matters worse the sample sizes can be tiny. We’ve got great news for you Mr 20,000-home landlord – 76% of the 15 fire risk assessments we looked at were OK. No we didn’t actually go to the houses. But the files are tip top. It’s a blessing that no one actually reads the things – too often boards just look at the traffic lights for simpletons on the cover sheet.

Of course there are strong boards. But you all need to step up to the plate. I really do see some sloppy work on safety. These days covenant compliance is the work for grown-ups. So other things get less attention. Time is finite.

While the HCA has to hit the fastforward button on safety, there are a few things they can pause for

now. I’d pull the tenant involvement standard and beef it up. You must listen to tenants on safety. After every tragedy you find someone that says ‘I told you so’. Better to be wise before the event.

I’d take a good look at the VfM standard before it comes out too. Make sure it spells it out that scrimping on safety is wrong. And compel landlords to proactively manage safety in much the same way they deal with financial risks.

The long forgotten white paper wants more hook ups to boost efficiency. The HCA shouldn’t just check the finances of a merger.

It must cast a sharp eye over the new outfit’s safety management plans. You can get a lot of untidiness here as the top brass spend all their energy heaving a deal over the line.

And If I was the HCA I would certainly not be trumpeting about what a great idea de-regulation is just now.

As Joe Strummer, one of West London’s finest squatters, once put it – the future is unwritten. Of course we can do better if we all pull together. We have to build new homes, yes we need to look after the money, but our first priority must be to keep people safe. One of his most famous songs was about going up and down the Westway at night.

After the fire there is a darkness in that old sky. Never again.

Alistair McIntosh, Chief Executive, HQN JULY 2017 |

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How was this allowed to happen?

Jules Birch looks at the multitude of governance failings surrounding the Grenfell Tower fire and wonders why we have failed to learn lessons from the past.

Sometimes it takes one terrible incident to expose failures that were already in plain sight.

In the 1980s we got used to it. Valley Parade in 1985, King’s Cross and the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987 and Piper Alpha in 1988 exposed a collective complacency about safety and an individual willingness to cut corners and ignore regulation.

Afterwards we wondered how we could ever have had football stadiums with wooden stands or tube stations with wooden escalators and how we had ever allowed such lax safety on cross-channel ferries and North Sea oil rigs.

The fire at Grenfell Tower looks as bad, if not worse, than any of those disasters from the past. Add the horrific pictures, the gruesome detail and the chaotic disaster response by the authorities and you have something on the scale of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

Photo: Natalie Oxford

continued >>

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Failure Already the fire is looking like a failure of governance on every conceivable level. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) is within a whisker of being taken over by commissioners. An emergency taskforce had to take over relief operation. The council proved incapable of holding a meeting in public, hiding behind advice from its lawyers that this could prejudice the public inquiry. The chief executive, leader and deputy leader have all resigned.

The homes were managed by Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (TMO) but it seems equally paralysed and its chief executive has also stepped down to focus on the inquiry. In theory it is an arm’s length management organisation but in practice all the key decisions on the refurbishment of the tower seem to have been taken by councillors.

A TMO ought to be more focused on tenants than a conventional landlord but instead it has been accused of ignoring the concerns of Grenfell residents. A system of regulation that once focused on giving tenants a voice has been pared down into one that allows intervention in cases of proven ‘serious detriment’ to consumers but focuses mainly on financial viability and value for money. The Audit Commission, which once inspected local authorities and their housing management, was abolished in 2015.

Questions

“Already the fire is looking like a failure of governance on every conceivable level”

Meanwhile, questions of governance in its widest sense apply well beyond the council and the TMO. Decisions taken by the contractor, consultants and subcontractors are already the focus of intense scrutiny.

There are questions that go to the heart of a construction industry culture that is relentlessly focused on cost and is based on subcontracting work into smaller and smaller packages and passing risk down the line.

The terms of the contracts, supervision of the work and the specification of the materials will be an inevitable focus of the inquiry.

But the fire has also shone a light on the whole system of regulations and assessments that govern building projects. You might have thought that the refurbishment of a 24-storey tower block with only one staircase might be even more heavily regulated than the construction of a new building but you would apparently be wrong.

The architects of 1960s and 1970s tower blocks knew the fire risks in tall buildings and they were designed on the principle of compartmentation so that a fire and smoke from one flat would not spread to the rest of the building. This is what lies behind the advice to residents that they should stay put and wait to be rescued. We knew from previous incidents and from the inquest into the fatal Lakanal House fire in 2009 that changes to the exterior of the building can compromise its fire safety.

Yet our system of regulation appears at best ambiguous. Guidance on Part B of the Building

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Regulations on fire safety stipulates that materials used on the outside of buildings more than 18 metres high should be of ‘limited combustibility’ but it remains unclear whether the cladding system used on Grenfell Tower was compliant with it or not.

Building control inspection was deregulated in the 1980s to allow private approved inspectors to compete with local authorities. The fire inspection regime in England was similarly opened up in 2005 at the same time as responsibility for fire risk assessments was transferred from local fire services to building owners and landlords.

As we went to press the cladding on 181 tower blocks had failed fire tests at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) despite passing the system of regulation, control and certification at the time it was installed. The 100% failure rate prompted the Local Government Association to question the testing method. Needless to say, the BRE was itself privatised in 1997.

Despite a strong recommendation from the coroner in the Lakanal House inquest in 2013 and a pledge by former housing minister Gavin Barwell in 2016, a review of England’s Part B has still not appeared. If governance starts at the top, the rapid turnover of housing ministers – six since 2010, 15 since 2000 – has not helped.

It’s the same story with sprinklers. When the Welsh government made them compulsory in all new residential buildings (though not refurbished ones) it faced a barrage of criticism from housebuilders and English ministers complaining about ‘red tape’.

But switch the focus away from the national level and the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire and there are governance issues for social landlords at a very local level too.

Immediate questions were raised about cladding installed by the same contractor on five tower blocks on Camden’s Chalcot estate but residents were also evacuated over concerns about fire doors and gas pipe insulation.

Some landlords have decided to retrofit sprinklers in their blocks following the Lakanal recommendations but most have not.

Compromised The Right to Buy has also made it more difficult to manage tower blocks that were designed on the assumption that one landlord would be in control. New buyers may decide to make internal alterations that unwittingly compromise fire safety or replace one-hour rated fire doors with less institutional, but non-fire rated alternatives. They may make internal alterations that compromise fire safety (as at Lakanal House). And they make it more complicated for landlords to fund work on the safety of the block as a whole because they have to go through the tortuous process of getting contributions from leaseholders.

The impact of the Grenfell Tower is being felt all over

Photo: Jon Chiral Tributes placed at the scene of the Grenfell Tower fire

the country, by tenants wondering if their blocks are safe and by landlords and their boards wondering if they have paid enough attention to fire risks.

Time for consumer regulation to be re-booted

Public inquiry

By Roger Jarman, former Head of Housing, Audit Commission, and member of the Cave Review of social housing regulation

At Grenfell itself, exactly who was responsible for what and when in the management of the homes and the procurement of the refurbishment work will be a key focus of the public inquiry led by retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick. A separate police investigation is looking at whether to bring criminal charges, potentially including manslaughter, against anyone involved in the decisions that led to the disaster.

However, both have already faced criticism from residents: the judge and inquiry for being too narrowly focused and the police for being reluctant to confirm a higher death toll than the current 80.

The disasters of the 1980s provide a powerful reminder of where even this kind of governance can go wrong.

The decade ended with the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters while watching their team in an FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough in 1989. The police, media and political establishment infamously blamed the tragedy on the behaviour of the fans.

It took years of campaigning by the families for the truth to finally emerge via a second independent inquiry and a second inquest that concluded that the fans were unlawfully killed. Finally, 28 years after Hillsborough and two weeks after Grenfell, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it was bringing charges against six people involved on the day including senior police officers.

The residents of Grenfell Tower, dead and alive, deserve the truth and they deserve justice. The rest of us need answers to ensure that this never happens again.

Ten years ago Professor Martin Cave published his seminal report on housing regulation – ‘Every Tenant Matters’. This marked the high point in the evolution of social housing regulation in England.

As the title suggests, the service user was put at the very heart of the regulatory framework devised by the Professor and his team. The report’s blueprint was enshrined in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 and the Tenant Services Authority (TSA) was created as a standalone agency to regulate the sector as a whole covering both local authorities and housing associations.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) was set up to fund and manage state investment in the social housing sector.

The TSA had a wide range of regulatory tools; many focused on ensuring social housing tenants received the best possible service from their landlords and that they had as much control over service delivery by their landlords as possible. But the TSA had barely been established when the coalition government assumed power in 2010 and the dismantling of the new regulatory regime began.

Indeed Grant Shapps (the housing minister in the new government) had boasted that the TSA was ‘toast’ when he was opposition. continued >> JULY 2017 |

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A rearguard action saved the regulatory function from complete abolition after lobbying from the City’s financial interests ensured that the pared down function would focus its much reduced resources on assessing the financial viability and governance of housing associations (local authorities would hardly feature in this brave new world).

This demonstrated the power of the finance sector as it sought state assurance that its multi-billion-pound investment in housing associations was secure. At the same time tenant bodies like TAROE had their state funding withdrawn and Cave’s proposals for a National Tenants’ Voice to represent tenant interests in discussions with government and landlord bodies were ditched.

Bonfire of the Quangos The new arrangements were put on a legal footing in the Localism Act 2011. The TSA and the Audit Commission (which ran the housing inspection service in conjunction with the TSA) were abolished as part of the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’. Housing regulation – now part of a reconstituted HCA – was to be based on the HCA’s governance and financial viability standard (and latterly on the value for money standard too).

Tenants’ interests were not entirely ignored. Consumer regulation had a set of standards that providers were supposed to follow but those responsible openly acknowledged that this part of the regulator’s remit would be reactive only.

Serious detriment ‘Serious detriment’ had to be proved before any form of intervention would be considered. Invariably the HCA only became aware of breaches in the consumer standards when providers had ‘fessed up’ that, for

“We need a regulatory framework that puts tenants first and looks at the performance of all landlords not just housing associations” instance, a large number of gas safety certificates were out of date.

Even the sanctioning of providers failing the consumer standard mirrored the framework for financial regulation.

Lazily, the regulator judges that providers not meeting its consumer standards should have their governance rating downgraded. Because the HCA has no remit over the governance of local authorities, this measure does not even apply to local housing authorities or their managing agents (such as ALMOs or TMOs).

Co-regulation And with its co-regulatory approach, the HCA has simply monitored the actions of providers attempting to rectify their faults. Despite having a plethora of powers to deal with underperforming providers - new managers can be appointed, fines can be levied, inspections can be commissioned to forensically assess the problems identified to name but a few - very few of these regulatory tools (if any) have been used by the HCA to date.

Opportunity In the light of the Grenfell Tower disaster we need a reboot of consumer regulation. The HCA is about to be broken up and regulation separated once more from investment (as recommended by the Cave Review when they were previously undertaken by one body the Housing Corporation).

So we have a real opportunity to re-visit the conclusions of Professor Cave and also mirror the regulation of school, hospitals and care homes where the key objective of the regulator is to judge services from the perspective of the user (be it the pupil, patient or care home resident).

We need a regulatory framework that puts tenants first and foremost and one that looks at the performance of all landlords and is not focused on just housing associations. And a regulator that not only oversees the safety and security of tenants but also a regulator that assesses the quality of the services delivered by landlords.

We do indeed need a regulatory system where every tenant matters – and one geared less to the interests of the banking sector. < Professor Martin Cave

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Issue 18 | July 2017 In this issue: 1 Welcome / Too many women becoming homeless 2 Welfare Reform: The challenges ahead for policy and practice 3 Disabled people’s perspectives on welfare conditionality 4 In brief

EVIDENCE update

THE LATEST RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS – IN PLAIN ENGLISH

Welcome The start of a new parliament, with a new government in place, is generally a buoyant time in politics. This time, however, the mood has been sombre, with a weakened government, terrorist attacks and the Grenfell Tower fire.

The mood is also a reaction against the years of ‘austerity’. Though social security and housing benefit have not been top political issues recently, they will form an important part of the debates to come.

In this issue, Professor Christina Beatty reflects on the

recent election and on the welfare benefit cuts still in the pipeline – amounting to greater cuts than already seen. And Dr Jenny McNeill offers case studies of the difficulties faced by two disabled people trying to claim Employment and Support Allowance.

Homelessness remains a serious and growing problem in the UK, and the situation of homeless women is under-reported. For the first time researchers have put together knowledge about women and homelessness from across Europe. Dr Joanne Bretherton reports.

Janis Bright Editor Evidence

Too many women becoming homeless Joanne Bretherton from the University of York comments on the first systematic attempt to bring together knowledge about women and homelessness across Europe.

Women’s homelessness is neglected. We think about homelessness, as people sleeping on the street and in emergency shelters. For many of us, our picture of homelessness is not a woman and her children, sleeping in a friend’s living room because they have nowhere else to go.

Domestic violence is not seen as a homelessness issue.

Yet women and women with their children are driven out of their homes, made homeless, by male violence.

Between 1998-2015, 66,660 households containing lone women and lone women parents were accepted as homeless due to domestic violence in England1.

For women, homelessness often means staying with someone, family, friend, or acquaintance, because there is nowhere else to go. Sofa surfing is the experience of many homeless women.

Internationally and in the UK, academic research is showing us that women react to homelessness in different ways to men. Women avoid the street, they

avoid emergency services which are largely filled with men, instead, they rely on the people they know. Women may sofa surf more than men and there is growing evidence they exhaust these informal arrangements before seeking formal help.

Research shows that lone homeless women are highly vulnerable. Simultaneous mental illness and addiction, high rates of domestic violence and abuse and extremely poor physical health are common. American evidence shows us that women (and men) do not start their homelessness careers with these sorts of support needs, instead such needs can result from recurrent or long-term homelessness.

The homelessness statistics, which differ between England and other parts of the UK, record people who are helped under the homelessness laws, they are not a count of all homeless people. Lone homeless adults can find it difficult to receive assistance under these laws, which focus on protecting children and a narrowly defined group of vulnerable adults. This means women without children, or who have lost contact with their children, often cannot access these systems. Because of an emphasis on homelessness prevention people are less likely to reach the point of being recorded as ‘homeless’.

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness

JULY 2017 |

EVIDENCE - 1

While the homelessness statistics are not perfect, we can use them to get an idea of numbers. Between 1998 and 2015, 1,475,150 households were found homeless and in need of assistance in England. We know that 995,360 of these households were homeless families and/or had a pregnant woman living in them. Analysis of the homelessness system has shown that around 65% of homeless families accepted as homeless are lone women parents, which means somewhere in the region of 647,000 lone woman-headed homeless families were accepted as homeless in England from 1998-20152. In the third quarter of 2016, 74,630 of statutorily homeless households were in temporary accommodation, 33,630 of whom were female-lone parent headed families and 5,620 of whom were women living alone (53% were women lone parents or lone women).

Of course, this is not all of women’s homelessness.

There are women in homelessness services, women made homeless by domestic violence in refuges and approximately 20-30% of rough sleepers are women.

Again, UK and international research is showing us that women experience sofa surfing at possibly higher rates than men.

Putting exact numbers on women’s homelessness is a challenge. Women sleeping rough hide, because if they are seen on the street they are at potential risk, and women who experience sofa-surfing, temporarily

staying with someone else because they have no home, are hard to count because they move around.

The solutions to women’s homelessness are both simple and complex. The simple aspect centres on the UK’s chronic shortage of affordable, adequate housing with security of tenure, which the evidence shows ends almost all family homelessness. For lone women with complex needs, specific interventions like Housing First, a carefully and sensitively managed package of support, may be needed. Homelessness prevention, particularly when eviction and unplanned moves can be stopped, is another area that can be better developed. Support for women at risk of domestic violence is fundamental to preventing and reducing women’s homelessness.

The Women’s Homelessness in Europe Network (WHEN) has brought together the information on the current state of knowledge on women’s homelessness in a new edited collection, Women’s Homelessness in Europe which is available from Palgrave Macmillian.

The first systematic attempt to map our understanding in more than 20 years has highlighted the likely extent of sofa surfing by women, the failure to record women’s homelessness and the need for better understanding to enhance prevention and services.

Joanne Bretherton is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York

2 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness and Pleace, N. et al (2008) Statutory Homelessness in England: The experience of families and 16-17 year olds London: DCLG https://www.york.ac.uk/media/chp/documents/2008/Family%20Homelessness%20final%20report.pdf

Welfare Reform: The challenges ahead for policy and practice Professor Christina Beatty from Sheffield Hallam University reflects on the absence of welfare reform as an issue in the general election, and what the future impact of cuts could be.

Given welfare reform has been central to contemporary political and policy debates since 2010, when a major overhaul of the benefits system was announced by the Coalition Government, it has been surprisingly absent as a big issue in the run up to the recent General Election.

Only in the latter stages of campaigning have issues concerning the impact of continued austerity and welfare reform on the vulnerable, the sick and disabled, low-paid workers, families and children come to the fore. Even then, politicians tend to focus on specific elements of the reforms, for example the ‘bedroom tax’ or the two child limit for Tax Credits. This is often the trap that politicians, policy makers and practitioners tend to fall into. Focusing on individual elements of the reforms - say for housing professionals to focus primarily on reforms related to the Housing Benefit system or the implemention of Universal Credit and direct payments misses the bigger picture.

It is the cumulative impact over time of the totality of the reforms that poses the biggest risk to low-income households. The continuous downward pressure on

EVIDENCE - 2

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benefit income affects their ability to maintain housing costs over time especially in a time of rising rents or if living in a high rent area. Many families affected by welfare reform are in work, but do not have savings to fall back on. This means that low-income households find it increasingly difficult to ‘just about manage’ or to ‘get by’ when they are hit by a financial crisis - such as losing a job, a reduction in hours, the washing machine packs in or the car breaks down. Over time, the resilliance or coping mechanisms become stretched to breaking point as further reductions in entitlement and eligibility are introduced.

The scale of cuts across a whole array of working age benefits is unprecedented (Figure 1). The level of support available to low-income households, compared to that which would have been available if the reforms had not been introduced, has reduced significantly. The Coalition Government implemented cuts equivalent to £14.5bn per year by March 2016. An additional £11.7bn per year of cuts have been announced by the Conservative Government since 2015. Only about a quarter of these reforms have been implemented so far and there are significant cuts to come before they are fully realised. If the reforms go ahead as planned, they will not be fully implemented until 2021. Even if there is a change of Government the manifestos indicate that

Figure 1: Estimated annual financial loss from welfare reform, GB 4,210

Tax Credits 3,030

Child Benefit

2,700

1 per cent uprating 1,670

Housing Benefit: LHA 1,190

Personal Independence Payments 650

Employment and Support Allowance Council Tax Support

370

Housing Benefit: 'bedroom tax'

360

0

500

2,255

Tax Credits 1,680

Personal Independence Payments* 535

LHA cap in social rented sector

450 340

Benefit cap

245

Mortgage interest support

100

Household benefit cap

3,190

Employment and Support Allowance

210

Non-dependant deductions

3,580

Benefit freeze Universal Credit Work Allowances

30

HB: 18-21 year olds 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500

0

500

1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500

Estimated loss £m p.a.

Estimated loss £m p.a.

Pre-2015 reforms impact by March 2016 Post-2015 reforms impact by March 2021 *Additional post-2015/16 impact of pre-2015 reform Sources: HM Treasury, Impact Assessments and Sheffield Hallam estimates based on official data

the majority of the proposed reforms in the pipeline are likely to proceed.

These welfare reforms have occurred alongside increased conditionality, a harsher sanctions regime and the introduction of Universal Credit which includes longer waiting periods before being eligible for support, as well as the introduction of direct payments for housing entitlement. These factors are compounded by the growth in precarious low-paid work and selfemployment which has ocurred alongside a long-term stagnation in wages and increasing inflation. Recent figures from ONS highlight this phenomenon with inflation running at 2.7%, wage increases at 2.1% and no uprating of working age benefits (often used to top up low-paid work) which are frozen for four years.

This four year freeze on uprating benefits also applies to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates. This will make it even more difficult for tenants reliant on Housing Benefit living in the private rented sector (both those in work or out-of-work) to find properties within the local LHA rates.

In the vast majority of Broad Rental Market Areas these have already fallen below the the 30th percentile of private market rents in the area. When the LHA system is applied to Housing Benefit for tenants in the social

rented sector from 2019 they will inherit the LHA rates that have been in place since 2015.

As you read this piece, with the general election over, we will know which of the manifesto proposals with regards to welfare reform are likely to be implemented.

The result may be no change or limited change to the policies already implemented or still in the pipeline.

However, this may be an opportune time to gather evidence which highlights the very real but often unintended consequences of welfare reform. Changes in policy can be made at any point of the political cycle, but now seems as good a time as any to take stock and reassess the situation.

This article draws on research undertaken by Professor Christina Beatty and Professor Steve Fothergill on ‘The Uneven Impact of Welfare Reform: The financial losses to places and people’ which was co-funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Oxfam. Both authors of the report are based at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University. An accompanying dataset is available on the scale of the financial losses and numbers affected for every local authority in Britain.

Disabled people’s perspectives on welfare conditionality Dr Jenny McNeill reports on two case studies taken from interviews carried out as part of the Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change study.

Brenda and Steve (not their real names) are among 58 disabled people interviewed as part of our study conducted with 480 welfare service users. They live in different locations and have different impairments, but their accounts illustrate the challenges inherent in claiming Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

Brenda is 50 years old and owns her own home. She has been diagnosed as bipolar and has suffered from

depression for most of her life. She is also a recovering alcoholic. University educated, Brenda worked until 10 years ago but has since struggled to find secure employment. She became increasingly depressed at this and started drinking heavily, which worsened her mental health. When we first interviewed Brenda, she was claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA).

Brenda had initially felt “excited” about offers of “extra support” to find work. However, this changed when she was referred to attend the Work Programme (WP), which clashed with a referral appointment for specialist drug and alcohol treatment. Although she informed the DWP, she was sanctioned for non-attendance, which led to a JULY 2017 |

EVIDENCE - 3

suicide attempt: “When I’d had my benefit stopped … that’s when I emailed the adviser, and I basically had been up all night, and I’d drunk quite a lot, and I felt suicidal, and I actually wrote to her and said, ‘I feel suicidal about this’, which sounds really extreme, but I just thought I’m living in a crazy world where I try and get help and I’m punished for trying, and I’m actually going to be more of a drain on society if I continue to drink and can’t work, whereas if I get help, get sorted, hopefully, I will be able to contribute, be a meaningful member of society.”

At our second interview, Brenda had been placed in the Work Related Activity Group for ESA and was therefore still expected to actively engage with the WP. When we visited Brenda for a third and final interview, she still lived with fear of being sanctioned; she describes it as like living “on tenterhooks.... I just feel like if I put a foot out of place, the money will be withdrawn”.

Steve was living with his parents following a relationship breakdown. He had worked until two years before, when he sustained an injury requiring multiple surgeries that left him unable to work.

Steve’s story encapsulates a number of issues that are common features for many who apply for ESA and undergo the Work Capability Assessment. He describes his frustration at applying for ESA and being rejected, even as someone still undergoing hospital treatment: “I had no option but to go to the local jobcentre to try and claim a benefit. They put me on JSA to start off with.

Then they said ‘no, we need to make a claim for ESA’... I was on that for a while and then they sent me for some

medicals ... and it was fine to start off with. Then… I had another medical there and they rejected it. They said I was fit for work... They could not understand that I was in hospital, and how am I supposed to work when I’m in hospital? … they still expected that some employer is going to employ me while I’m doing that.”

Like Brenda, Steve described feeling the continual threat of being sanctioned: “It’s just they never leave you alone. They’ll try everything. If they don’t get a letter on time, if they don’t get a phone call, they’ll stop your benefit, and it’s wrong.”

Steve felt that he was unfairly treated and that there is a lack of appropriate support and empathy within the current benefit system: “That’s what I felt with the DWP. I’m not a person, I’m a number.... I’m not only coping with an illness that affects your daily life, but I’m also affected [by] somebody [who] has just clicked a button and just stopped my benefits, stopped the bit of income that’s coming in.... It does start to affect, mentally as well.”

Welfare Conditionality: Sanctions, Support and Behaviour Change is a major five-year programme of research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. www.welfareconditionality.ac.uk Full paper by WelCond researchers Dr Jenny McNeill, Universities of Sheffield & York, Dr Lisa Scullion & Katy Jones, University of Salford, and Dr Alasdair Stewart, University of Glasgow http://www.ingentaconnect.com/ content/tpp/jpsj/pre-prints/content-ppjpsjd1700008

In brief CaCHE opens A consortium led by Glasgow and Sheffield universities has won a prestigious funding award to set up a new housing research centre. The centre, which has funding for five years from the ESRC, officially begins work in August.

Wales legislation Pete Mackie, Ian Thomas and Jennie Bibbings reflect on ‘a year of pioneering Welsh legislation in practice’ in preventing homelessness, in the latest edition of the European Journal on Homelessness http://www.feantsa. org/download/article-4592410342917616893.pdf Homelessness event Feantsa, the European homelessness organisation, is holding its annual conference in Barcelona on 22 September. Details http://www.feantsaresearch.org/en/ conference-presentations/2017/09/22/12th-europeanresearch-conference-on-homelessness?bcParent=760

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

EVIDENCE - 4

| JULY 2017

Troubled Families Programme A paper by Sue Bond-Taylor explores the experiences of families within the Troubled Families Programme in responding to professional concerns about the condition and maintenance of the family home, in People Place and Policy https://extra.shu.ac.uk/ ppp-online/domestic-surveillance-and-the-troubledfamilies-programme-understanding-relationality-andconstraint-in-the-homes-of-multiply-disadvantagedfamilies/ Grenfell Tower fire After Grenfell, regulation must not be a dirty word, says Ben Clifford from UCL in a piece for The Conversation http://theconversation.com/afterg re n f e l l - re g u l a t i o n- mu s t- n o t- b e - a- d i r t y-wo rd80031?sa=google&sq=housing&sr=6

After Grenfell –

what a new regulatory regime should look like

Tenants and politicians of all hues are getting angry with us.

Yes, you can say some of this is wrong and misplaced. But we do know only too well that some things have got to change.

I’m not at all interested in recriminations, I just want to see us move quickly to do all we can to stop any more accidents.

Here’s my six point plan for a new regulatory regime:

1. It would cover all rented homes (in the real world private renters and social tenants live in the same streets and the same blocks and face the same issues)

2. It would place a duty on leaseholders to co-operate with and pay for safety works (it is insane to look at safety only in the rented homes – we need to wake up to the fact that the right to buy happened)

3. Safety would move to the top of the agenda with a new mindset (the way in which we relentlessly scan and stress test for financial problems should be applied to safety)

4. It would listen to and act on tenants’ views especially where there

is a shortage of rented homes and they have no consumer power (maximising the use of social media – but recognising the fact that the top end of the market sorts itself out so it doesn’t need us)

5. It would ensure that a cadre of professionals, such as clerks of works

and fire risk assessors, are trained and ready to nip problems in the bud (these people would have direct access to boards and cabinets)

6. It would safeguard the money and look after the interests of lenders – but not as a sole or all-consuming duty.

Alistair McIntosh

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General election 2017:

Where do we go from here?

Mark Lawrence looks back on a tumultuous few weeks for the country - and the housing sector in particular.

It’s fair to say the 2017 general election didn’t go the way many predicted - least of all the Conservative Party.

Despite the surprising gains from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, Theresa May and the Tories managed to cling on to power but only with the help of the DUP. A diminished May returned to Downing Street but the question is - for how long? And with Brexit becoming all consuming where does that leave housing?

If the general election result was a disaster for the Tories, a genuine tragedy shocked the entire nation six days later - and inadvertently bumped housing up the political agenda.

The devastating fire at Grenfell Tower overshadowed all other news during some very dark days in June. The Prime Minister’s leadership was put to the test, and once again it came up short.

A failure by both national and local government to respond promptly and effectively in the immediate aftermath of the fire raised question marks about the

Theresa May

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Jeremy Corbyn

| JULY 2017

priority given to the families of the victims and the hundreds made homeless.

It is just one of the many issues surrounding the fire that will be dissected in the coming months and years, along with the suitability of cladding in tower blocks, building regulations and the long-term under-investment in social housing. The trouble is, we are not likely to get answers anytime soon.

The cumulative political effect of the general election result and the Grenfell tragedy is yet to be seen but there is little doubt that the country (and housing especially) is currently operating in a policy vacuum.

A watered down Queen’s Speech focused largely on Brexit while the latest housing minister merry-go-round over at DCLG saw a complete novice take over the role.

Not that the government had much choice in replacing the previous incumbent Gavin Barwell who had lost his Croydon Central seat after Labour overturned his wafer-thin majority of 165.

Hero or villain?

In the days after the election, fulsome praise was heaped on Barwell both by his Conservative colleagues and senior housing figures. Widely regarded as one of the nicest and most receptive politicians you could wish to meet, news of his defeat was greeted with some dismay.

Barwell was quickly brought back into the thick of the action, however, when he was appointed Theresa May’s chief of staff following the resignation of her close allies Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill - who became scapegoats for the Conservatives’ election defeat for their role in making a hash of the party’s manifesto.

It had been a busy couple of days for Barwell but just as it looked like he had managed to claw victory from the jaws of his election defeat - he too was engulfed in the increasing controversy surrounding the Grenfell fire.

It emerged that during his tenure as housing minister where he won plaudits for ‘getting the brief’ and working

with rather than against the sector - Barwell pledged to review part B of the building regulations, which cover fire safety, as part of the process following the Lakanal House fire. However, despite much lobbying the findings of the review have never seen the light of day.

Running scared?

So what of Barwell’s successor? Alok Sharma is the 15th housing minister since 2000 and an unknown quantity.

Coming from a junior role in the foreign office, the Reading West MP has had little to say on housing in the past, bar a few brief exchange in the Commons.

Due to Grenfell, he has been thrown in at the deep end since his appointment. Just barely days after being “honoured” to be named the Housing and Planning Minister, he was accused of running scared from media questions about the disaster.

And you couldn’t really blame him if he did want to shut himself in a cupboard. He was heckled by local residents when he appeared on Victoria Derbyshire’s radio show two weeks after the fire then mauled by Piers Morgan in a car crash interview on GMTV witnessed by millions. Unsurprisingly, he has also been mocked and ridiculed on social media.

That said, if there is one place the housing minister is guaranteed to get a warm welcome, it’s the Chartered Institute of Housing conference. What better opportunity then for Mr Sharma to put a difficult week behind him and get onside the people who really matter?

Except he pulled out at the last minute, completely undermining any goodwill the sector may have had towards him while at the same time raising serious question marks about his ability to do the job.

It was the first time in 22 years the housing minister has not addressed the conference, with Local Government Minister Marcus Jones stepping in to give a 10-minute speech with no questions from the audience.

Many housing professionals thought the failure to turn continued >>

Gavin Barwell

Alok Sharma

JULY 2017 |

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up showed a disrespect to the sector, at the very time he should be keeping housing professionals on board.

No matter what happens post-Grenfell, the government desperately needs more homes to be built and it also needs existing homes to be made as safe as possible, as quickly as possible.

Arms race In the lead up to the election, the main political parties were involved in some sort of housing supply version of the arms race, where everyone tried to outdo each other on how many homes they were going to build.

Labour said 500,000 new social rent homes would be built, with another 500,000 standard homes; the Liberal Democrats promised 300,000 homes of all tenures every year while the Conservatives said they would build 1.5m homes by 2022.

What was interesting, however, was the unlikely nod the Tories gave to social housing and the role of councils.

“We will never achieve the number of new homes we require without the active participation of social and municipal housing providers,” their manifesto stated before adding: “We will enter into new Council Housing Deals with ambitious, pro-development, local authorities to help them build more social housing.”

However, as always with Conservative promises around affordable housing, there is a caveat: “We will build new fixed-term social houses, which will be sold privately after 10 to 15 years with an automatic Right to Buy for tenants.”

‘Social housing’ debunked Not only that, but the bold use of the term ‘social housing’ in the manifesto was quickly debunked. In an interview with Inside Housing, Gavin Barwell confirmed that rents would actually be set “at affordable levels”.

We are also unlikely to see much of a rowback on the extension of Right to Buy to housing associations either. This was particularly evident in the hours after new minister Sharma was announced, with the majority of responses to his tweet about being housing minister focusing on the inaction of his party to enforce the policy.

It would be a major own goal by the party if they were to abandon their plans, and a line in the manifesto is a veiled hint it could still be part of the plans: “We will continue to support those who struggle to buy or rent a home, including those living in a home owned by a housing association.”

The manifesto also looks to go one step further from the Homelessness Reduction Act, passed earlier this year, with commitments to halve rough sleeping by 2022 (which would still be a higher level than in 2010) and eradicate it by 2027. But with limited funding in place, it looks like a hard ask for meaningful change to take place.

In truth, few believe there will be a radical approach to housing policy in the next few years. Sajid Javid has already said that the Housing White Paper will form the

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| JULY 2017

basis of much of what is to come. That said, confirmation of the rent settlement for housing associations post-2020 would be a big help.

The white paper also signalled a possible change in approach towards local authority involvement in housebuilding.

As Natalie Elphicke, chief executive of the Housing Finance Institute, said at a recent conference appearance: “It seems as if the mindset on getting local authorities to build again has been successfully changed.”

Some councils, such as Stoke on Trent, have already met with the DCLG to discuss different ways of using their Housing Revenue Account, including discussing whether lifting the borrowing cap will be possible.

As for the private rented sector, the government has introduced a Bill in the Queen’s Speech to get rid of “unfair” letting agent fees.

There was also a commitment to give more stability to some tenancies in the market, with the minimum being raised to three years. However, current plans will only apply to new build PRS properties, not existing ones.

For the housing sector at large, issues still surround the continued uncertainty over the future of supported housing, the Local Housing Allowance Cap and welfare reform.

The line from Marcus Jones in his short CIH speech on “creating a sustainable funding solution for supported housing” was met with groans from some in the audience.

Housing providers have worked hard with DCLG to put offers on the table, but so far no deal has been reached.

The sector is also grappling with the introduction of Universal Credit, with latest research from the National Federation of ALMOs and the Association of Retained Council Housing finding that 86% of UC claimants living in council properties are in rent arrears.

Can DUP help UK with UC? With the DUP now directly supporting the government, many in the sector hope they can influence national housing policy and reflect what the DUP have done to offset the effects of the new benefits system in Northern Ireland.

When Universal Credit is introduced in the province this September, there will be automatic payment of rents direct to landlords, and twice-monthly payments to claimants.

CIH Northern Ireland Director, Nicola McCrudden, said the offsetting of the reforms “make a real difference to people’s lives”.

She added: “A practical way that the party could continue to help people at the national level is by seeking that the Conservative Party reverse its planned cuts to housing benefit for people living in social housing, which will apply from April 2019.”

All in all, with limited support from Whitehall, housing providers need to find their own solutions to effectively serve residents and local communities. Effective partnership working between housing associations, local authorities and SME builders is regarded as the key to success but still doesn’t happen often enough.

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To merge or not to merge – what are your options?

Want to know more about mergers?

Are they the right answer for you?

Form Follows Function – board strategy sessions Alistair McIntosh and Ian Parker will take your board through: • The HCA requirements on VfM and how merger fits in • What works and what doesn’t - our research on the pros and cons of merger in housing and other industries • The indicative financial impact of merger for you and your capacity to build homes or regenerate estates • A discussion based around the questions in our form follows function toolkit amended to your circumstances • Other options available to you eg stock swaps, shared services.

“By the end of it the board had a much clearer idea of what we could do if we joined the neighbouring association or a national one set against working on our own. It was certainly thought provoking.”

Housing association chief executive

To find out more please contact Anna Pattison on 01904 557197 or anna.pattison@hqnetwork.co.uk

www.hqnetwork.co.uk/consultancy

The Last Word Why involving residents is more important than ever

Rob Gershon Lead Associate HQN Residents’ Network Since joining the Residents’ Network, I’ve been on something of a crash course on the regulatory framework that surrounds resident ‘involvement and empowerment’. That we even call it a framework hints at its nature, because it is not a hard-and-fast set of rules.

That we call it regulatory is something of a curiosity, too. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has always been adamant that any actions landlords take should have the tacit approval of their tenants. However the overarching and frankly vague nature of the ‘consumer standards’ that are the basis on which tenants are given a voice haven’t really ever guaranteed this outcome.

There is undoubtedly a power structure that underpins how the standards are interpreted, with landlords having almost total control over what avenues residents have to communicate with them.

This doesn’t mean everybody is doing resident involvement wrong, and it doesn’t necessarily mean

there is a right way, but if I reflect honestly on my time reading about it, seeing it and occasionally getting involved with doing it, co-regulation, involvement and empowerment can certainly be a mixed bag.

Although the HCA has undergone a restructure, the things it does operationally remain focused on two key aims. One is to ensure that housing associations remain financially viable, and the other is to ensure they are being operated effectively through ‘good governance’.

This regime is operated very much under the assumption that housing providers themselves come forward with information about where there is room for improvement. It’s not exactly self-regulation, but it’s a long way from having something like an Audit Commission, despite the relatively thorough ‘in depth assessments’ the HCA can instigate.

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, there are a lot of questions about whether these frameworks genuinely provide a way to hear tenant voices.

There is some great practice going on where landlords are taking the risk of giving up the inherent power imbalance in the landlord-tenant relationship. It’s not handing over all board and management positions to residents, but the principles of coregulation and co-production that are supposed to make landlords accountable to tenants are being adopted in some places.

However, the light-touch of the regulations means that it’s just as possible to turn the consumer standards into a set of tickboxes. There are no real rules

“There is a difference between dealing with complaints and involvement, empowerment and co-regulation, but often people make complaints out of concern for their communities”

about residents having board representation, for example. While some organisations promote and nurture this approach, others don’t.

Other pressures being brought to bear – whether it’s the HCA’s standards about qualifications for board membership, or the 1% rent cut leading to some landlords cutting spending on co-regulation and involvement – are also having a dramatic effect on the nature of tenant empowerment.

As a council tenant and a fulltime carer, I have a slightly different perspective on what cutting the funding for these kinds of functions results in. Good tenant involvement costs money. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money, but taking funding away closes down channels of communication.

There is a difference between dealing with complaints and involvement, empowerment and co-regulation, but often people make complaints out of concern for their communities. There will always be people who need a fence fixed or some other repair that might seem trivial, but that first point of contact, somebody taking the time and effort to get involved, even as a complaint, can be the sort of interest or passion that is the spark to get people involved.

This doesn’t mean we have to promote every complainant to the board, and with new technologies and enormous organisations serving tens of thousands of residents, it doesn’t necessarily mean all interactions can be personal ones.

Nor do they have to be, as activities like resident scrutiny change shape to be more about collecting data.

Every aspect of the housing sector is affected by what happened at Grenfell Tower. We should all be looking at what we can do better, far beyond the narrow issue of cladding, to ensure we’re doing everything we can to ensure nothing like it happens again. It‘s not just about communication and involvement but these are areas that can make a huge difference.

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Leasehold management summit 2017 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Changing the dynamic

Thursday 21 September 2017 London

Visit www.hqnetwork.co.uk/events or call 0845 4747 004 for more information and to book your place.