Category: Housing

The statement made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in the House of Commons on 17 November 2020.

I am today announcing the publication of the social housing White Paper. This White Paper will bring transformational change for social housing residents and the new approach and regulatory changes we set out will make a measurable difference to their lived experiences.​

A home should always be more than just four walls and a roof. This country has a long tradition of providing homes for those most in need, going back many centuries. Today, the social housing sector provides homes to 4 million households. Many landlords provide a good service to their residents. They provide a decent, safe home. They support thriving neighbourhoods and communities. They are open with their residents, listen to them and treat them with respect. But this is not true of all landlords.

The tragedy at Grenfell Tower in June 2017 raised critical questions for everyone involved in social housing. The chair of the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, identified broader questions on social housing policy raised through the consultation on the inquiry terms of reference. It was agreed that these broader questions should not be within the scope of the inquiry itself.

Through the 2018 social housing Green Paper we sought views on a wide range of potential changes by talking to residents across the country as well as launching a call for evidence about how social housing is regulated. Many residents reported positive experiences, but others did not. We heard concerns about safety, and about complaints being handled slowly or poorly: that residents were not listened to or not treated with basic courtesy and respect. This is why today I am delivering on our manifesto commitment and publishing the social housing White Paper: “The Charter for Social Housing Residents”.

Alongside the changes we are making to improve building safety, our package of measures will make a real change to residents. It will ensure that there will be action for those landlords whose services fall below expectations so that they can be brought up to the level of those that we know already deliver a good service.

Summary of proposals

The White Paper establishes a new charter for social housing residents, setting out what every social resident should be able to expect of their landlord:

1. To be safe in their home

We will reinforce the regulator of social housing’s consumer regulation objective to include safety explicitly. We will legislate to place an obligation on landlords to identify a nominated person responsible for ensuring compliance with health and safety requirements. We will consult on how we apply the stronger legal requirements on smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in the private rented sector to the social rented sector, followed by a consultation on how to ensure social tenants are protected from poor electrical safety. We will support residents to have a stronger voice on safety matters and promote best practice on safety engagement with landlords.

2. To know how their landlord is performing

We will establish tenant satisfaction measures for social landlords to report against on issues that matter to tenants. We will make sure landlords are reporting clearly on how they spend their income and introduce a new access to information scheme for housing association tenants. And, we will require landlords to identify a senior person in their organisation who is clearly identified as responsible for ensuring they comply with consumer standards.​

3. To have their complaints dealt with promptly and fairly

We will build on the changes we have already implemented with the Housing Ombudsman Service to improve its performance and reduce its decision times, ensuring swift and effective resolution of complaints. We will raise awareness of how residents can make and escalate complaints. We will expect social landlords to take greater responsibility for upskilling their staff to serve residents better when they make a complaint or raise an issue.

4. To be treated with respect, backed by a strong consumer regulator for tenants

We will transform social housing regulation by creating a new, proactive consumer regulation regime for social housing, delivering robust oversight of all social landlords. This means establishing a new arm of the regulator of social housing to regulate proactively on consumer standards including quality of homes, repairs, engagement with tenants and complaints handling. The new approach will raise standards and include routine inspections of the largest landlords every four years, alongside risk-based reactive inspections to deliver scrutiny and investigation of landlords most at risk of failing residents. We will ensure residents can access information about their home and the services they receive, and can raise concerns about systemic failure to the regulator of social housing. We will maintain the robust economic regulation that is already working effectively to support a well-governed and financially viable sector, and make sure the whole system is cohesive and balanced.

5. To have their voice heard by their landlord.

We will empower residents by requiring landlords to improve tenant engagement. We will deliver a new opportunities and empowerment programme for social housing residents, to support them in engaging with landlords and holding them to account. We will review professional training and development to ensure residents are treated with courtesy and respect.

6. To have a good-quality home and neighbourhood to live in.

We will encourage investment in neighbourhood, place and decency. We will review the decent homes standard and boost the quality of, and access to, green spaces. We will tackle anti-social behaviour by enabling tenants to know who is responsible for action and who can support and assist them.

7. To be supported to take their first step to ownership.

We will enable delivery of good-quality, affordable homes including the investment of £11.5 billion in the new affordable homes programme to deliver up to 180,000 homes. The programme will unlock a further £38 billion in public and private investment in affordable housing. We are also introducing a new affordable homes guarantee scheme and implementing a new, fairer and more accessible model for shared ownership.

Alongside the social housing White Paper, I am publishing the analysis of the consultation responses to the social housing Green Paper 2018 and to the call for evidence on the Government’s review of regulation 2018. I am also publishing a consultation on mandating smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in social rented homes with the aim of ensuring the same legal protections for social housing tenants as for those in private rented homes.​

This new charter with its focus on transforming social housing regulation, ensuring homes are decent and safe, offering residents swift and effective resolution of complaints and empowering residents will rebalance the relationship between landlords and tenants. This is a strong, coherent package that is going to make a real difference in people’s lives.

The comments made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 17 November 2020.

We are delivering on the commitment we made to the Grenfell community that, never again, would the voices of residents go unheard. This white paper will bring transformational change for social housing residents, giving them a much stronger voice and, in doing so, re-focusing the sector on its social mission.

I want to see social housing tenants empowered by a regulatory regime and a culture of transparency, accountability, decency and service befitting of the best intentions and deep roots of social housing in this country.

The new approach and regulatory changes we set out in this white paper will make a measurable difference to the lived experiences of those living in England’s 4 million social homes in the years ahead.

The speech made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 11 November 2020.

Introduction

Thanks, Mark.

It’s good to be with you all. Despite the new national covid measures under which we’re all living and preventing us from meeting in person today, and I hope we can do again next year, our mission remains the same – to build the homes the country needs – and that work continues despite all the other pressures on government.

I was resolute that the property market needed to be kept open at this difficult time – and it has been offered unique protections, being better supported than almost any other sector of the economy.

I hope you will see that at all levels of government, there is a recognition that building is one of the most important things we can possibly be doing. To create and sustain jobs, to make housing more affordable for the young and those on lower incomes and to level up by encouraging investment in those parts of the country which have seen too little of it in recent decades and ensuring good quality, safe, and attractive homes are available to all in the United Kingdom.

We recognise that the market needs to be considered as a complete ecosystem – covering construction, tradespeople – and in the residential property world, estate agents, removal companies, and solicitors.

People renting and buying can still move. Removal firms and estate agents and lettings agents can still operate. Tradespeople like plumbers and electricians can still enter homes. And, crucially, construction can and should continue.

Because we know that your industry is an engine of growth – and both the backbone and the beating heart of our economy. We have tried everything we can to keep the sector going. Recent industry trends have highlighted just how resilient the sector has proved in recent months.

The latest data from the taxman shows that in September, 84,480 homes sales were completed in England.

This represents an increase of 1.1% when compared to same month in 2019. Month-on-month, house sales are up by 16%, representing a considerable bounce back in transactions compared to more modest improvements last month.

The home sales pipeline is now 50% bigger than this time last year, with 140,000 more buyers rushing to beat the Chancellor’s stamp duty holiday deadline. And a robust housing market is fuelling a September rebound of the construction sector too. The purchasing managers’ index for construction rose to 56.8 in September. This is the fourth consecutive reading above 50, which indicates the majority of businesses have reported improving activity.

But although we are building more homes and mortgage applications in the UK have surged to a 12-month high, we will continue to work with the sector to develop more products for first time buyers.

City centres / high streets

Commentators have been saying for years that we are living through a generational shift in the way we conceive of the interrelations between work, society and our surroundings.

They point to the changing landscape of town and city centres and high streets – the proliferation of boarded up buildings, the memories of old stores that struggled to compete with their online counterparts – and point to a profound rebalancing in the economy, and across society more generally.

The narrative is one of a world that has gone digital, leaving communities behind. Its an argument that has been repackaged time and time again, that those market forces that we’ve been living through are now accelerating at break neck speed. Zoom and Microsoft Teams have moved the goalposts, meaning that after this is all over, many will never go back to life as normal, and will continue to work remotely.

And data suggests that as the line blurs between home and workspace, our expectations of what we want from our homes also changes.

A recent report from RightMove said that homebuyers are escaping cities, with searches for homes in small towns and villages doubling, with people looking for more space for their home during the lockdown.

It’s too early to say with real confidence how much change we’ll see in the years ahead. Many people undoubtedly want to go back to work, and productivity, creativity, and moments of inspiration are easier to come by when people are brought together. Hundreds of years of urbanisation are unlikely to be unwound so quickly, people enjoy living in cities and towns where they can enjoy the wonderful hospitality, leisure and culture that we have in many great cities and towns.

This is particularly true for younger people – who when working from home are less able to benefit from training and mentoring opportunities that arise from office spaces, and who bear the brunt of the inequality of the situation, many working at the end of their bed in a cramped studio apartment or house-share.

There are clear advantages of working from home – I’ve enjoyed seeing the range of virtual backgrounds people choose on their work calls, and working from home of course means more time with my family.

But at the office, there is no risk of my 3 daughters and our puppy running into the room knocking over the laptop.

There are changes that we are all aware of – rapid technological leaps that are reforming and disrupting industries and supply chains, and high streets are transforming to meet that challenge.

Their ongoing transformation has the potential to be as significant as any change since the Second World War, or even since the motor car led to the widespread reconfiguration of modern urban spaces.

It is a challenge that requires real depth of imagination and vision to ensure the health and prosperity of communities.

We are working towards more repurposing of space for mixed use but we want that to be done sensitively, avoiding the mistakes previous generations have made, avoiding the casual loss of buildings and heritage and ensuring no new dislocated communities are created.

We are doing this through further investment in our high streets and town centres, through our £3.6 billion Towns Fund.

We’ve already brought forward a lot of investment since our pandemic, through our Getting Building Fund which has committed £900 million to ‘shovel ready’ projects in this financial year – bringing with it much needed investment and jobs as they try to adapt and evolve to new circumstances.

At the start of the pandemic I recognised the importance of these questions would pose and started to talk about placemaking and identity. It became a focus of the planning reforms we brought forward.

In particular, I wanted to provide high streets with the flexibility they need to adapt to these modern realities, giving property owners the ability to plan for the future, and reflecting the desire for more flexible working space and outdoor areas.

By the summer, we had already reformed the Use Class Order, making it easier for property owners to adapt and evolve their businesses.

The pandemic has highlighted that these freedoms – important as they are – also need to be tempered by protections, to make sure that people can truly benefit from the changes, which is why I announced last month that homes delivered through Permitted Development Rights must meet national space standards.

New planning laws that offer the flexibility to deliver new mixed use properties and this will be a critical element in meeting the Prime Minister’s central objective of building 1 million homes over the course of this parliament.

Housing delivery

When it comes to house-building – with your help, we were making excellent progress before the pandemic. Last year we built more new homes than at any time in the last 31 years, taking the total delivered since 2010 to 1.5 million homes. The proportion of young homeowners increased after declining for more than a decade.

I want us to be a country that builds, that sees previous years as the starting point which we can exceed. I take heart that through the pandemic, the market has proven more resilient and robust than many would have predicted, and we in government have tried to support this: extending construction working hours, cutting stamp duty at the beginning of summer, and bringing forward a £400 million brownfield fund to get building in our core cities and urban areas not simply on greenfield sites and rural areas.

Following the announcement of the new £12.2 billion Affordable Homes Programme at Budget, the biggest investment in affordable housing in a decade, last month Homes England launched their prospectus for bids.

This aims to deliver up to 180,000 affordable homes over 5 years across the country, and will ensure more of those homes are built outside of London and the South East than its predecessor pushing investment into the Midlands and the North that has seen too little of it in recent decades.

And around half of homes will be for ownership, with the vast majority of these available through a new, more accessible model of Shared Ownership.

Much-needed changes that will help bridge the gap between renting and home ownership.

This will also be the first programme following the introduction of the Right to Shared Ownership – our new scheme which will give most housing association tenants the opportunity to buy a stake in their home using the new model for Shared Ownership, should their personal circumstances allow. Being a social tenant is the first rung on the ladder to ownership should someone want to take those steps.

But there’s a lot of uncertainty over what lies ahead – over what happens next with the virus, despite the recent good news with respect to the vaccine and mass testing in Liverpool, and the recovery of the economy.

But I am resolute that construction and the housing market will continue to be a central pillar of our economy and great supporter of jobs. There’s no other part of the economy which contributes to creating and sustaining jobs and every economic recovery in my lifetime has seen housebuilding and construction as a central element to that recovery plans. We will keep building and build back better – delivering the homes people need, and ensuring those who dream of owning a home of their own are able to do so.

Planning reform

With this in mind, the Prime Minister and I have set out a new vision for radical reform, starting with our planning system which, for decades, has failed to deliver the homes we need.

The planning system has its flaws it’s a system that doesn’t deliver enough homes, it doesn’t deliver them fast enough and doesn’t allow us to develop a competitive housing market to ensure smaller businesses can prosper and the houses being built, for many people, are of insufficient quality and not sufficiently beautiful nor sustainable.

Local building plans were supposed to help. Yet they take on average 7 years to agree in the form of lengthy and absurdly complex documents and accompanying policies.

It takes an average of 5 years for a substantial housing development to go through the planning system before a spade is even in the ground. That is too long and putting too many broader objectives at a society are being put at risk. The proposals we set out is for a more faster, transparent, predictable approach and moving the planning system to a more interactive and digital one rooted in the 2st century.

Centred on good design and place-making and a more harmonious relationship between the built and natural environments.

Developer contributions

We’re saying that those who build these homes and those who benefit from building them to contribute more to the infrastructure around the homes being built.

Our proposed Infrastructure Levy will simplify the system through a nationally-set, value-based flat rate charge, making it more streamlined and transparent – a welcome break from the merry-go-round of negotiations and renegotiations that render our current system so inefficient and leads to little public trust in its outcomes.

The new Levy will aim to raise more revenue than at present by capturing a greater share of the land value uplift – a decision we made explicitly to ensure that the system supports the infrastructure and affordable housing needed to create strong, mixed communities and to give local people more confidence that housing will give more benefits to them and their children.

It’s an approach that provides greater certainty and clarity all round; giving developers the confidence to bring forward innovative and ambitious plans for new development, safe in the knowledge that their efforts won’t be wasted or arbitrarily rejected.

Communities, too, can be confident that they will benefit from development.

A more diverse market

The new approach also, vitally, opens up the system to new builders. This is one of our core objectives, having more diverse, competitive planning system and house building market.

Thirty years ago, small builders accounted for 40% of new build homes. This has since fallen to just 12%. SMEs are vital for long-term housing delivery. Between 2010 and 2018, they were responsible for the creation of around 140,000 jobs.

Self-build and modular construction techniques have also struggled to gain a foothold.

This is bad not just for housing delivery, but also for the innovation and competition for the productivity of the UK economy. We want to make the UK a word leader and see the businesses taking root in the Midlands and the North grow, thrive, build more of those homes and see more of the product they rely on manufactured in the UK.

Last week I announced a review of the law to make it easier for people dreaming of building their own home – an industry estimated to be worth almost £4.5 billion to the British economy. Currently there are around 15,000 of these types of homes built every year – an increase of 50% in 2 years, we want to go further than that encouraging local councils to bring forward serviced plots wherever they can.

Our determination to increase the housing supply is rooted in this government’s longstanding belief that we have a duty to help people onto the housing ladder, and to help those who get onto the ladder. One issue that we are tackling is the growing problem of newly built houses being sold as leasehold rather than freehold.

This government is committed to bringing forward leasehold reform in order to outlaw unfair practices that have given leasehold a very bad name and left many leaseholders in a difficult position.

Earlier this year the Law Commission published a number of reports setting out how we could make the process of enfranchisement simpler and easier, improve the position of leaseholders more generally and embed commonhold as a more established tenure.

We will shortly be responding to this report – setting out the reform government will take forward and we intend to reform leasehold to cut unnecessary costs, uncertainty and complexity to make the process of enfranchisement as simple as possible for leaseholders. And to ensure that common hold is made a reality for more and more people. We’ll legislate to ban new leasehold homes at least, and reduce ground rents to zero.

Homes of all tenures / home ownership

The truth is that too many young people, families and others will continue to be trapped paying high rents, being priced out of putting down roots where they grew up, where they live and work, if we don’t act.

That’s why we’re building more homes, that’s why we’re reforming the planning system, that’s why we’ve brought forward the biggest affordable homes programme in 10 years and that’s why we’re bringing forward our First Homes initiative – something I think could be life-changing.

Under this scheme, local first-time buyers can buy homes at a discount of at least 30% in their local communities, with councils able to put key workers at the front of the queue.

Where property prices are highest, the discount could be as high as 50%.

It will apply to the new home forever, locking in that home for first time buyers in perpetuity.

We’re accelerating the roll out of First Homes with a 1,500-home pilot, funded by the new Affordable Homes Programme and setting an expectation that 25% of the affordable homes delivered through developer contributions will be First Homes in the future.

Rough sleeping

That commitment to build more affordable homes very much includes homes for the most vulnerable in society.

They have been our priority throughout the pandemic and it’s fair to say that the way we have protected people sleeping rough is essentially and widely regarded as among the best in the world. Our everyone in programme helped 29,000 of the most vulernable people off the streets and into safe accommodation, a huge tribute to the local councils and charities involved in that initiative.

We’re building on that through the new Protect Programme, which provides a further £15 million to help councils that need extra support ensure that everyone sleeping rough has somewhere safe to go during the current restrictions and over the winter.

Helping us both protect people from the virus and move forward with our goal of ending rough sleeping.

The programme is part of significant ongoing efforts – backed by over £700 million funding for homelessness and rough sleeping this year alone – including building or renovating 3,300 new homes for rough sleepers, the biggest injection of cash to acquire this type of property since the early 1990s, creating a new national asset for those people who come off the street can be moved into good quality accommodation as they begin to build their lives

The Prime Minister and I are determined that it will be this parliament that brings rough sleeping to an end and reduces the number of rough sleepers on our street to the absolute minimum.

Lockdown and economic support

While we continue to face testing times, our ambitions and optimism for the future remain high. The vaccine breakthrough is welcome news.

But as the Prime Minister has said, it is still very early days and we need to remain focused on following the rules to keep people safe and limit the economic damage.

We have faced dark days before as a country and have always been able to build back better.

I have every confidence we will do so again; with the housing market once again leading the charge, backed by a once in a generation set of planning reforms that promise to transform, backed by greater investment.

I look forward to working with you to make these changes a success to support your industry in every way that we possible can and to meet up again in person once we put coronavirus behind us and are truly beginning to build back better.

The comments made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 5 November 2020.

The way we have protected rough sleepers from COVID-19 is widely considered to be the best in the world.

At the start of the pandemic we launched Everyone In, which protected thousands of vulnerable people. That work hasn’t stopped and we’ve backed it with £700 million.

As the new national measures come into force, I am launching the Protect Programme to ensure councils are offering everyone sleeping rough on our streets today somewhere safe to go – protecting people from the virus and moving forward with our goal of eliminating rough sleeping.

The comments made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, on 5 November 2020.

We have already taken unprecedented action to support renters during the pandemic including introducing a 6 month notice period and financial support to help those struggling to pay their rent.

We are now going further by protecting renters from eviction during the new national restrictions and throughout the Christmas period – with a pause on bailiff activity other than in the most serious circumstances, such as anti-social behaviour or fraud.

Striking the right balance between helping tenants in need while ensuring landlords have access to justice in the most serious cases.

The statement made by Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, in the House of Commons on 13 October 2020.

Today, I have announced additional support for rough sleepers this winter, giving local areas the tools they need to protect people from life-threatening cold weather and risks posed by covid-19.

During the pandemic, we have worked closely with local authorities and the sector to offer vulnerable people safe accommodation and support. That work is on- going and in September we had successfully supported over 29,000 people, with over 10,000 in emergency accommodation and nearly 19,000 provided with settled accommodation or move on support.​

These efforts have been backed by significant Government support. We have given councils over £4.8 billion to help them to manage the impacts of covid-19, which we have been clear includes their work to support rough sleepers. Over the summer we worked with every local authority to develop a local, tailored plan to support rough sleepers over the coming months. This has been supported by £91.5 million of funding from the Next Steps Accommodation programme, allocated in September.

Today’s announcement further builds on this existing package of support over winter, setting out a plan that gives local areas a range of levers to support vulnerable rough sleepers as we approach winter.

First, there will be a new £10 million cold weather fund for local authorities to bring forward covid-secure accommodation this winter.

Secondly, we will be working intensively with the areas in greatest need, in recognition of the particular challenges they face.

Thirdly, recognising the vital role of the faith and communities sector, we are establishing a new £2 million transformation fund to ensure the voluntary sector can bring forward covid-secure accommodation.

Finally, we are publishing comprehensive guidance to the sector, produced with Public Health England, Homeless Link (the umbrella organisation for homelessness charities) and Housing Justice, to help them open shelters more safely, where not doing so would endanger lives. We know that some night shelters are planning to re-open imminently and our operating principles and additional funding package will help shelter providers and local authorities make any additional winter provision safer from the spread of covid-19.

Today’s announcement is on top of the £112 million rough sleeping initiative funding provided to local authorities in 2020-21, as well as the recently announced funding allocations to provide interim support and winter funding as part of the Next Steps Accommodation programme. We will also be bringing forward 3,300 longer-term units of accommodation this year. In total, the Government are spending over £700 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping this year alone. We remain committed to transforming the lives of some of the most vulnerable in society, and to ending rough sleeping for good.

In addition, the Government have injected over £9 billion into the welfare system, including helping people with housing costs by increasing local housing allowance rates to the 30th percentile—putting an average of £600 into people’s pockets this year. We have taken action to protect tenants and support them to stay in their homes. Most recently, we have increased notice periods to six months meaning that anyone served notice today can stay in their home until mid-March in all but the most egregious cases, such as those involving antisocial behaviour.

We will set out further detail about how local areas can access this winter funding and support imminently, and I encourage all relevant partners and local authorities to consider how they can best use this funding to save lives this winter.