The Chartered Institute of Housing has developed an ambitious set of proposals to revitalise the social housing sector in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire with calls for a significant growth in both investment and support. With a Government green paper on affordable housing expected very soon, the CIH says the Government should be aiming to re-establish social housing as one of the central pillars of society alongside education and the NHS. CIH chief executive Terrie Alafat called on Ministers to suspend the Right to Buy and transfer billions of pounds from private housing into the building of new affordable homes. ‘Rethinking social housing’ was launched at Housing 2018 in Manchester and sets out an ambitious new vision for affordable housing. Polling by Ipsos MORI has revealed strong public support for the sector and this has possibly emboldened the institute. Ms Alafat said: “The message we got from our research was loud and clear – social housing has a unique and positive role to play and it is highly valued.”

Central roll

She highlighted ‘a huge disparity’ between the support for social housing and the current level of investment. Ms Alafat added: “We can only truly start to tackle the chronic shortage of affordable housing in this country by putting social housing at the centre of government plans to solve the housing crisis.” “I want to be very clear – yes the government needs to make some big changes but landlords must step up and take action in a number of areas without waiting to be told what to do. The sector must own its future. We cannot call ourselves a civilised society if we are failing to provide a safe, decent and affordable home for everyone who needs one.” Recommendations made in the report include:

• Suspending right to buy to stem the loss of social rented homes; removing the barriers stopping councils from replacing homes sold under the scheme and looking at more effective ways to help people access home ownership.
• Shifting investment from private housing to genuinely affordable homes – CIH analysis shows that 79 per cent of the Government’s £53 billion housing budget up to 2020/21 is directed towards the private market, with just 21 per cent going to affordable housing;
• Reviewing the consumer regulation that is supposed to protect social housing tenants, in particular the tenant involvement & empowerment standard;
• Giving tenants the power to shape the direction of future government policy at a national level; and
• Linking social housing rents to local incomes. Member organisations are also challenged to ‘up their game’ with social landlords being called upon to:
• Review the way they communicate with tenants and listen to and act on their concerns;
• Review their tenant scrutiny processes and the way that tenants are able to compare their performance in management and maintenance; and
• Set rents that are genuinely affordable to people on lower incomes

Public support

By taking a balanced approach towards Government and social landlords, the CIH hopes to tread a fine line between advocacy and evidence based research. It is clear that some policies may not be new, but it wants to see a new framework which supports and protects tenants, while at the same time giving them a greater say in the development of policies which affect them and their implementation. Much of the evidence and the basis for the recommendation lay in the near 200 workshops carried out during the report’s preparation. These were supplemented with a national poll, which showed very high levels of support for social housing. Polling carried out by Ipsos MORI showed that:

• More than six out of 10 people across England support more social housing being built in their area;
• 80 per cent of people agree that social housing is important because it helps people on lower incomes get housing which wouldn’t be affordable in the private rented sector;
• 78 per cent agree that social housing should be available to people who cannot afford the cost of renting privately, as well as to the most vulnerable;
• 68 per cent agree that social housing plays in important role in tackling poverty in Britain; and
• 65 per cent of people agree that the negative view of the people that live in social housing is unfair.

It will be interesting to see how much of this work will have found its way into the Government green paper when it is published. The good news is that we should not have long to wait, but with Cabinet ministers already lobbying hard for growth in their departmental budgets it will surprise no-one if housing has to make do with what it already has. The next best thing to hope for will be to see money being re-allocated towards genuinely affordable housing.