Just for the sake of completeness, apart from reforming tenancy types and rent types, the government are also suggesting:

 1    Right to Buy will continue for the new flexible tenancies (I give that one the thumbs down, unless the proceeds can all be kept locally and used to provide more social housing;  at the moment the money goes off to the Treasury, and RTB is removing houses from the social rented sector, which is stupid when there is such a shortage of social housing)

2    incentives to help local authorities bring some of the country’s empty homes back into use (will help increase the number of available homes, so reducing the shortage)

3    changing the way waiting lists for social housing work (trying to make some changes that will see people have their names on waiting lists only if they have a realistic prospect of qualifying for a house)

This third one is quite a major change.  Local authorities may get back the right to decide which categories of people can go onto their waiting lists.  There is also a possibility that while the current “top priority” categories may continue to be top priority, other groups may be added.  At the moment, those priority groups are:  homeless people, people living in unsuitable accommodation, people needing housing because of medical conditions or disability, and people who need to move for social reasons (one such reason would be victims of crime or anti-social behaviour).  

4    changes to transfers for existing tenants to make it easier for them to move (trying to address the problem that existing tenants lose out on moves because new tenants or tenants with higher priority get the relatively small number of properties)

This is also significant change.  Both this  and the change to the waiting lists reverse what Labour did in their 2002 Housing Act.   Labour brought in their Act to try to sort out existing problems.  Their solutions haven’t worked very well.  However, there is a risk that by reversing the changes, the coalition will simply reintroduce the previous problems instead.

5    beefing up mutual exchange as a mechanism for helping tenants move (this must be a good thing!)

6    changes to the way local authorities deal with homeless people, so that they are more likely to house them in private rented accommodation

This is proposed because at the moment, most homeless people whom the council has a duty to house are put in temporary accommodation for longish periods until a council house becomes available, and very few of them are housed in the private rented sector.  I don’t know whether this is a good idea or not.  It may get people out of unsuitable B & B accommodation into a more permanent home, but on the other hand, what happens if there is a problem with the private sector home?   I don’t want to lump all homeless people together, but clearly there are some of them who will struggle to manage with private sector accommodation.  And the government is suggesting that 12 months may be long enough for the private sector tenancy, and that the homelessness duty should only continue if the person finds themself homeless again within 2 years.  I just wonder whether that is going to work, or whether some people will find themselves in a revolving door?

BTW Wokingham tends to house people in mobile homes as temporary accommodation, rather than in B & Bs.  Which is miles better.

7    regulation will change, as will the regulator.  The government is looking at a lighter touch but with more tenant involvement (the extra tenant involvement is good)

8    and finally, council housing finance is going to be reformed.   Basically, instead of cross-subsidies by tenants in some areas of tenants in another through the government taking part of the rent and giving it to other people, in a once and for all exercise, councils will borrow a one-off amount equivalent to the amount of cross-subsidy they would have paid over 30 years, and then have to service the debt.  Or something like that.   And if you think I could manage to fit discussion of that into a few lines, well, I can’t.  

More about that one at some point in the future.   It affects Wokingham a lot, as about £5 million of the rent paid by council tenants in Wokingham Borough disappears to the government.  That’s about half the total.  So you can see it really does matter, and is worth more discussion.

So that’s about it.  That’s an outline of what the government is suggesting.  People have until 17th January to let them know what they think.

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