Industry news


Midlands association evicted tenants illegally


Tenants of a large West Midlands housing association may have been forced to sleep rough after they were evicted with very little notice, the Homes and Communities Agency has disclosed. WM Housing may have caused “serious


detriment” by evicting tenants either with no notice or only a week’s notice, the regulator concluded. The HCA said WM Housing breached the tenancy standard by not giving licensees in one of its temporary housing schemes the legally required 28 days’ notice before an eviction. This meant a small number could have been forced to sleep rough. WM provides over 30,000 homes across


Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Birmingham, Coventry and the wider West Midlands area. It has grown incrementally through a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last six years. It comprises a mix of traditional and stock transfer organisations. During the course of an in-depth


assessment visit WM Housing reported to the regulator that for up to two years a “large number” of tenants in a supported housing scheme in Coventry were not given 28 days’ notice before their eviction. In some cases tenants had been given no notice at all, others received only seven days notice meaning they had no time to find alternative accommodation. The issue was identified after a change in management at the temporary housing scheme. The regulator concluded the landlord


needed to improve aspects of its governance arrangements. It said: “Improvements are required to WM’s control framework to ensure that key controls relating to higher risk activities are operating as intended, in line with established policies and procedures, and with appropriate leadership oversight.” The regulator’s assessment of WM’s financial viability was unchanged at the top rating of V1. Kevin Rodgers, group chief executive


said: “We are very sorry that this error was not identified before the notices were issued at the Gateway. While in every case the individual residents had broken the terms of their licence we fully recognise we failed to give people the required notice. We take our responsibilities seriously and we will be working with those who were affected to put things right. I also want to reassure our residents that this was an isolated incident in one particular scheme.”


Consultation on smoke and fire alarms launched


The Scottish Government has launched a consultation on standards for smoke and fire alarms, with an aim to introduce consistently tough standards across the sector regardless of tenure or housing type. The Scottish Government have said that they


consider standards to be at their highest in the Private Rented Sector (PRS). Therefore, they would like to use current regulations for smoke and fire alarms within the PRS as a basis to bring standards across other types of housing up to that level. The consultation has been brought forward, due


to the higher priority being given to fire safety across the UK since the Grenfell tragedy in June, and much of the focus of the consultation is around the use of smoke and fire alarms in flats and high rise buildings. The closing date for responses is 1 December 2017. The Common Housing Quality Standard Forum,


established in 2015, noted that the scope of the existing standards for social and private rented housing are linked to specific types of tenancy and therefore it is possible that some housing falls between the gaps and is not covered by either standard. To extend standards, the following options are


given in the consultation document: • Applying a new standard to social rented housing;


• Applying a standard to flats, irrespective of tenure;


• Applying a standard to flats in high-rise buildings, irrespective of tenure; and


• Applying a standard to all housing, irrespective of tenure. The Scottish Housing Quality Standard (SHQS)


could also be amended to include a more demanding standard for fire and smoke alarms in place of the existing element 44, which says there must be at least one smoke detector present in the property. The Scottish Government recognises that


changes made to the standard for social housing could have a much bigger impact on some landlords than others, depending on previous property improvements.


A year on lower benefit cap is pushing thousands into poverty says CIH


A year since its introduction the cap on welfare benefits is pushing thousands of people into poverty and putting them at risk of homelessness, according to the Chartered Institute of Housing. Figures released earlier this month show that at


August 2017 more than 68,000 families were being affected by the lower benefit cap. Nearly a third of these families are losing between £50 and £100 a week as a result. The lower cap came into effect on 7 November 2016. In a series of interviews which the CIH


conducted with households affected by the cap, half said they had gone without food, fuel or were otherwise in debt as a result and a third said they had been forced to use food banks. The cap reduced the total amount any family can


receive in benefits from £26,000 to £23,000 in London and £20,000 outside of the capital, leaving families with significant shortfalls between the benefits they get and the cost of their housing. Since the initial benefit cap was introduced in 2013, an estimated 160,000 families have had their benefits capped. Last year CIH warned the cap would hit families


across the social rented and private rented sectors with hundreds of thousands of children affected, now it is calling on the Government to use the budget to scrap the lower cap.


STRUGGLES CIH chief executive, Terrie Alafat CBE, said: “One year after the introduction of the lower benefit cap


its worrying effects are very much apparent. As a result thousands of families face a daily struggle to live – in some cases being forced to go without food or heating so that they can pay for their housing, in many others being forced into arrears and put at risk of homelessness. “The government says the aim of the cap is to get


people into work, but many of the families who have been capped receive benefits which recognise they are not able to work and the concern is that many more families could be a redundancy or period of ill health away from being in this situation. “The government has made a number of


commitments in recent weeks to build new homes and take other crucial steps to solve our housing crisis, but this is an example of a welfare policy which seriously undermines that commitment because it makes housing virtually unaffordable to a significant number of people. The government should use the budget to scrap the lower benefit cap.”


CIH conducted 18 interviews with households


affected by the benefit cap. Half of those households revealed they have gone without food, fuel or were otherwise in serious debt as a result of the cap. The Government’s figures show that of the


68,000 households capped 71 per cent are single parents, 77 per cent of those households have a child under five and 35 per cent have a child under two. Half of the families affected are on income support and 15 per cent are on Employment and Support Allowance.


www.housingmmonline.co.uk | HMM November 2017 | 15


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