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Grenfell tragedy will forever blight May’s housing legacy


Patrick Mooney, News Editor


This summer marked a hundred years since the passing of The Addison Act, which lead to the wholescale building of more than a million council houses across the country, in an effort to improve the living conditions and health of the population. It also marked an attempt by former Prime Minister Theresa May to portray her housing policies as a progressive attempt to redress the balance and end our national obsession with home ownership, giving a fresh lease of life to social and affordable housing. History will judge whether Mrs May succeeded in giving herself a positive housing legacy, but several key issues will surely condemn her attempts to failure. Her Government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire and the unsafe living conditions in which many people live in tower blocks is a national disgrace. Over two years have passed since the disaster and hundreds, if not thousands of high-rise blocks are still covered in unsafe cladding, while the occupants are unprotected from the risk of fire through a lack of water sprinkler systems and faulty fire doors. If the Government had acted on the recommendations of the Lakanal House coroner, made in 2013, then it’s possible the terrible events some four years later in west London, might have been avoided. From the days immediately following the fire Mrs May appeared unable to deal with its terrible consequences. Establishing the public inquiry was not ‘job done’ and the lack of a single recommendation so far on how we avoid a similar tragedy is a truly lamentable position to find ourselves in.


MISSED OPPORTUNITIES But Grenfell is not the only negative. Her failure to reform the Right to Buy and Universal Credit policies both represent huge missed opportunities to deliver a more caring and sensible housing policy for now and the next decade. Despite the proven and well evidenced need for more low cost, good quality housing, the Government failed to suspend the Right to Buy which is seeing thousands of affordable homes getting sold each year. At the same time councils are only allowed to use a fraction of the receipt on their replacement. No wonder the number of new social rent homes being built is so pitifully low. Lifting the HRA borrowing cap might help to replace some of the lost council homes, but this is likely to be severly restricted as councils have to spend billions of pounds on improving the fire safety of their existing housing stock. Continuing with the Help To Buy initiatives is costing tens of billions of pounds each year, while propping up housebuilders’ profits and providing an artificial stimulus to house prices. When it eventually ceases in the next decade, it could have serious consequences for the economy. Meanwhile more than 100,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation, which blights their lives and damages their chances of making a success of themselves. This is also extremely costly and puts huge sums into the pockets of private landlords.


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A READY MADE SOLUTION? A way around this mess has been put forward by the National Housing Federation and others, in a suggested ten-year programme to build 145,000 new social homes a year, of which 90,000 will be for social rent. The report provides a well- argued and financially sound programme, good for both the country’s population and its economy. It is anyone’s guess if Boris Johnson uses the plan to reshape housing policies, but much of the hard work in terms of thinking and planning has already been done! In fairness to Mrs May, her Government did drop a number of the ill-conceived policies of Cameron and Osbourne, but she should have gone further. There is now every indication that the new PM will change the Government’s focus, resources and effort back to home ownership and building homes for sale. In the private rented sector far more reform work was done than expected, but we have yet to see the fruits of this activity. There are still plenty of rogue landlords exploiting and abusing their tenants, while organisations representing the wider body of legitimate private landlords continue to cry foul at the changes and threaten to abandon the rental market. The Addison Act lead to a situation where councils housed about 40 per cent of the population. Not all of it was particularly good and there are issues with quality, but it did provide security of tenure. Today, councils provide housing for less than ten per cent of us. If Mrs May wanted a positive housing legacy then she should have given us a modern day Addison Act, backed up by modern service standards guaranteeing properties of a decent size and quality, at affordable rents. Tenants would be given a proper voice in the services they receive and an effective regulator and ombudsman to intervene when things go wrong. It’s not rocket science. But will the new PM take up the challenge?


HOUSING MANAGEMENT & MAINTENANCE


AUG/SEP 2019


£13billion pa plan to fix housing


Strong case for tenants watchdog


May defends track record


Safety fears continue for towers


PRS demands fast track tribunal


Patrick Mooney


Kingspan Kooltherm has been installed as part of the conversion and expansion of a former office building, adding luxury accommodation to Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter.


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