Landlord league tables and greater powers for regulators are just some of the proposals announced as part of a social housing “new deal”.
Housing Secretary James Brokenshire, launching a social housing green paper, said the measures would “re-balance the relationship between tenants and landlords”.
The Government say the proposals will empower residents to hold their landlords to account and give them support to seek redress when things go wrong.
Mr Brokenshire said: “Providing high quality and well managed social housing is a core priority for this Government.
“Our green paper offers a landmark opportunity for major reform to improve fairness, quality and safety for residents living in social housing across the country.
“Regardless of whether you own your home or rent, residents deserve security, dignity and the opportunities to build a better life.”
The key proposals which form the foundation of the green paper include:
– Steps to speed up the complaints process, providing access to effective dispute resolution when something goes wrong and giving tenants more support in accessing the redress options available to them.
– New reforms to make it easier for tenants to progress into home ownership, such as allowing them to purchase as little as 1% of their property each year through the Government’s shared ownership programme.
– Strengthening the regulator of social housing so it can focus on issues that matter most to tenants and has “sharper teeth” to intervene when needed, ensuring social homes are well managed and of decent quality.
– Allowing councils to continue to have choice over their use of fixed-term tenancies, enabling them to offer residents greater security in their homes.
– The introduction of performance indicators and new league tables, rebalancing the landlord/tenant relationship to hold bad practice to account and ensure residents are treated with dignity and respect.
In a separate move, to boost the number of Local Authority homes, a consultation into how councils spend the money from Right to Buy sales has also been launched.
This sets out proposals to make it easier for councils to replace properties sold under Right to Buy and build more affordable homes.
Responding to the announcements, Judith Blake, who is the Local Government Association’s housing spokesperson, said: “This green paper is a step towards delivering more social homes but it is only a small step, compared with the huge and immediate need for more genuinely affordable homes.
“There is a desperate need to reverse the decline in council housing over the past few decades.”
She added: “The Government must go beyond the limited measures announced so far, scrap the housing borrowing cap, and enable all councils, across the country, to borrow to build once more.
“This would trigger the renaissance in council house-building which will help people to access genuinely affordable housing.”
Shadow housing secretary John Healey said the green paper was “pitiful”, with nothing that “measures up to the scale of the housing crisis”.
He said: “The number of new social rented homes is at a record low but there is no new money to increase supply, and ministers are still preventing local authorities run by all parties from building the council homes their communities need.
“After eight years of failure on housing, ministers should back Labour’s long-term plan for a million new genuinely affordable homes over 10 years.”
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “The terrible Grenfell tragedy has shone a light on social housing and forced the country to think about the choices we face.
“Today’s Green Paper is full of warm words, but doesn’t commit a single extra penny towards building the social homes needed by the 1.2 million people on the waiting list.”
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