Industry News News in brief


• West Midlands based WM Housing is collapsing its group structure and merging all of it subsidiaries into a single legal entity, to be known in future as Citizen. The reorganisation is expected to be completed by September and it covers all 30,000 homes owned by WM Housing Group and its subsidiaries. The new association plans to invest £870m into its housing stock and communities over the next five years. The investment includes £500m to be spent on building 500 homes for outright sale and 2,800 affordable homes for rent and shared ownership by 2024. WM Housing was originally formed in 2009 from a merger between West Mercia Homes and the Coventry LSVT HA Whitefriars Housing. Later on Optima HA joined in 2012, followed by Family HA in 2014.


• Seven London council officers have been jailed for a total of 17 years for stealing more than £1m through a housing benefit scam. The officers created fake benefit claims over a period of six years while working as benefit assessors for Lambeth, Kingston, and Barking & Dagenham councils. Menelik Cowan, 38, was sentenced to six and a half years in prison at Southwark Crown Court after being found guilty of stealing £293,147 from Lambeth Council over six years. He denied fraud but was convicted by a jury after a trial lasting three-months. The other six defendants were given prison sentences of between 18 months and three and a half years. They are Hugh Small, 40, Rahel Asfaha, 36, Alex Williams, 39, Cassandra Johnson, 38, Jessica Bartley, 35, and Natasha Francis, 38. In addition Donna Francis, 58, and Derrick Williams, 59, were convicted of entering into a money laundering arrangement and received sentences of a 12-month community order and 15 months in prison.


• The Scottish social housing regulator has revealed it has barred several for- profit HAs from joining the sector north of the border. They have been able to do this because their registration criteria makes it clear that social landlords in Scotland must be organisations that do not trade for profit. The situation is different in England and Wales, where campaigners including the National Housing Federation want the term of a ‘housing association’ better protected, so that it only applies to not-for-profit organisations.


Labour would force private landlords to offer indefinite tenancies


drive to give renters more security. The plan was announced by the Shadow Housing


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Secretary, John Healey, who said it would protect tenants from arbitrary eviction, where landlords do not have to give a reason. In Germany, landlords are only allowed to evict tenants for reasons such as a failure to pay rent or committing an offence in the property. Meanwhile tenants would still be able to leave the property if they gave a period of notice. The proposal is a change from Labour’s pledge at


the 2017 election, when it committed to making private tenancies three years by default. Labour says the indefinite system brings more security for renters, with private tenancies in Germany lasting an average of 11 years, compared to about four in England. This would particularly help the 1.6m households


with dependant children in private rented accommodation. The scheme is also intended to reduce the extent of rent increases. Labour says landlords often use changes in tenancy as an opportunity to increase rents.


DESERVE BETTER Healey said: “People shouldn’t be living in fear of losing their homes. The insecurity of renting is a power imbalance at the heart of our broken housing market, where tenants are afraid to report problems


Labour Government will require private landlords to offer tenancies of indefinite length, similar to the German system, in a


The plan was announced by the Shadow Housing Secretary, John Healey, who said it would protect tenants from arbitrary eviction, where landlords do not have to give a reason


in case they are evicted, and families with children are forced to move at short notice. “Many landlords provide decent homes that


tenants are happy with, but the Government is allowing rogue landlords to take advantage of good tenants. Renters deserve better.” The plan was welcomed by the housing charity


Shelter, which said the current system meant “an alarming number of people are at the mercy of no- fault evictions”. Greg Beales, Shelter’s campaign director, said:


“Private rents are already expensive, so when you add short-term contracts into the mix, the situation for renters is pretty tough. Right now a family can be turfed out for no reason at any time, and saddled with not only the cost of moving but the huge burden of uprooting their lives. It doesn’t have to be this way.”


Right to Rent scheme ruled to be unlawful


The Right to Rent scheme which required landlords to check the passports and immigration status of prospective tenants has been found to be unlawful – as it encouraged racial discrimination against anybody with a foreign-sounding name or a foreign passport. The scheme itself threatened landlords with


unlimited fines and up to five years in jail if their tenants could not produce all the right immigration paperwork. But in a landmark ruling the High Court has declared one of Theresa May’s flagship schemes from her time as Home Secretary, to be unlawful. The court found that the Government ignored


evidence of these risks and, in turn, that it failed to provide any evidence the scheme delivers anything but misery and state-sanctioned hostility – targeted predominantly at minorities, people of colour, and people who were born somewhere else.


16 | HMM April/May 2019 | www.housingmmonline.co.uk The case was brought by the Joint Council for the


Welfare of Immigrants who warned the Government for years about the inherent risks of the scheme, as well as its cruelty and of the hostile environment it created. They were supported by various organisations in opposing Right to Rent, including the Chartered Institute of Housing. Even after the Home Office’s defeat, more public


money might be spent on appealing against the decision, despite the judgement making it very clear there is no “improved” version of the policy that could be considered lawful. The scheme had effectively delegated border


guards’ responsibilities to landlords and their letting agents. Many landlords were deeply unhappy with this and feedback from a pilot scheme was not positive. However, it also meant many people were turned away by landlords, simply because they could not produce a British passport.


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