Industry news
1.75m private renters never expect to buy a home
About 1.75 million people who rent their homes do not believe they will ever be able to buy a property, according to analysis of the English Housing Survey carried out by the Labour Party. This is an increase of 585,000 since 2010 and may
surprise Government ministers given the raft of measures they have brought in to encourage home purchases. It is up by almost 300,000 since 2012
when George Osborne, introduced the help-to-buy programme, which critics claim boosted demand. Levels of owner-occupation have been declining
since peaking at 71 per cent in 2003. Since then, population growth, a lack of new housing, the failure to replace social housing sold under the right-to-buy scheme and rising property prices have resulted in the figure dropping to 63 per cent. The shadow housing secretary, John Healey said:
“The dream of buying a home is dying for more and more private renters. With home ownership at a 30- year low and a million fewer under-45s with their own home now than just eight years ago, it’s clear Tory ministers have no answers to the cost of the housing crisis.” The Institute for Fiscal Studies recently found that the chances of a young adult on a middle
income owning a home in the UK have more than halved in the past two decades. It said an explosion in house prices above income growth had increasingly robbed the younger generation of the ability to buy their own home.
News in Brief
• Less than half the £4.8bn raised by selling council homes to tenants under the right to buy since 2012 (when discounts were increased) has gone on building replacement housing. Only 47.4 per cent of the cash raised through the sale of 63,518 council homes was put aside for replacement housing. Councils have started just 15,981 replacement homes. The remaining £2.57bn has been split between the Treasury (£920m), the repayment of historic debts (£1.1bn) and administration costs (107m). Town halls have retained £380m and councils have spent £50m buying back properties previously sold under the RTB policy.
• Social housing contractor Mitie’s property management arm had “a challenging year” with revenues down from £257.7m in the previous year to £237.9m, and its operating profit falling from £12.3m to £7.9m. The overall company saw its profits fall 6 per cent for the 2017/18 financial year, to £77.1m despite revenue growing from £2.1bn to £2.2bn, and the company’s order book growing to £4.5bn. In the coming financial year, Mite plans to integrate its property management arm into its engineering services arm. Phil Bentley, chief executive of Mitie, said it “is beginning now to focus on key social housing opportunities”.
• Northern-based Your Housing Group has formed a £54m partnership with Wates Living Space and Engie to reinvest in more than 6,000 homes over the next five years replacing kitchens, bathrooms and heating. Richard Woolfall, head of property services at the 28,000-home association said: “We’re passionate about building and managing high-quality homes and by modernising our existing properties people will no longer need to move house to enjoy living in a property they’re proud to call home. The savings will be used to realise our ambitious commitment to build 5,700
more new homes across the North of England over the next five years.”
• Redbridge Council has been given the approval to introduce an expanded selective licensing scheme, which will cover a further 12 wards in the borough when it is introduced on 1st October 2018. The council already operates a borough wide additional licensing scheme, and selective licensing schemes in the wards of Clementswood and Valentines. The new scheme means that all privately rented properties in 14 wards will need to be licensed, and comply with conditions to ensure the property is safe and well managed. It is estimated that an additional 15,000 privately rented properties will be affected. Redbridge Council say they have seen a marked increase in the number of requests for assistance from tenants because of the condition of their rented property, with many trying for months to get their landlord to carry out essential repairs.
• Leicester City Council has banned some landlords and letting agents in the city from displaying to let boards from this summer. Addresses in the Windermere, Hazel, Clarendon Park, Greenhill, West End, Ashleigh Road and West End conservation area parts of the city will be covered by the ban, which came into effect from 2nd July and will last for five years. Landlords and agents in these areas will have to apply for planning consent to put signs up advertising their properties-or they could face court action and a fine of up to £2,500. It comes as the council were successful in their application to the Government for a Regulation 7 direction, which will ban the use of ‘to let’ boards in some areas around both the University of Leicester and De Montfort University. Similar action to this has already been taken by councils in Brighton and Newcastle.
• The number of children living in temporary accommodation in Scotland has reached 6,615, a nine per cent increase on last year’s total and is at a 10 year high according to the
22 | HMM July 2018 |
www.housingmmonline.co.uk
Housing associations have made at least £82.3m from auctioning homes in five London boroughs since 2013, according to analysis by Karen Buck, the Labour MP for Westminster North.
Scottish Government. Overall there were 10,933 households in temporary accommodation, up one per cent on last year. Households with children spent on average 204 days in temporary accommodation, longer than the 161 day average for households without children. Of these 16 per cent were in hostels and 11 per cent were in bed and breakfast hotels. There were 39 households with children or pregnant women in B&B accommodation up from 33 at the same point last year. There were 34,972 homelessness applications recorded in Scotland, one per cent higher than the number of applications received in 2016/17.
• Eight out of 10 rough sleepers who died last year had a mental health problem according to research from the homelessness charity St Mungo’s. This is more than double the figure for 2010 when three in 10 rough sleepers who died had a mental health problem. Since 2010 the number of people sleeping rough in England has risen by 169 per cent. Over this period at least 158 rough sleepers died in London, an average of one death every fortnight. Nine in ten needed support for mental health, drug or alcohol problems.
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