London Tenants Federation submitted a response to the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC) consultation on reforms to social housing allocations. Government launched a consultation (now closed) into how they can give British citizens faster access to social housing, you may have heard the phrase “British homes for British people” used in news stories about this reform.
This consultation seeks views on the following issues:
1. The introduction of a United Kingdom (UK) connection test, to ensure that it is those with the closest connection to the UK who are eligible for a social home;
2. Mandating the following tests: local connection test, income test, false statement test, and tests for anti-social behaviour and terrorism offences;
3. The introduction of a new ground for eviction for those who are convicted of terrorism offences, and implementation of a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy for anti-social behaviour.
Response
London Tenants Federation does not see any need for the changes to social housing allocations policy suggested in the consultation document.
Existing powers
Local housing authorities already have powers to deal with the allocation of social housing and the regulation of social housing tenancies, and are bound by existing acts, as indicated several times in the document.
See Section 4: ‘Local housing authorities set their own allocation policies, but these must comply with Part 6 of the Housing Act 1996 and associated regulations, and local housing authorities must have regard to statutory guidance. Local housing authorities may only allocate social housing to people who are eligible and qualify. Where housing associations or other PRPs let directly, this is governed by the Regulator of Social Housing’s Tenancy Standard.’
A number of these measures have already restricted access to social housing. See Section 4 again: ‘In 2010, the government abolished ‘open’ waiting lists which previously meant applicants could apply to go on any local housing authority’s list regardless of connection to an area’ which ‘contributed to a 30 per cent decrease in the number of households on waiting lists.’
In Section 9, which proposes new grounds for eviction under the Terrorism Acts 2000 and 2006: ‘There is an existing discretionary ground which refers to a conviction for an indictable offence committed in, or in the locality of, a dwelling-house’; ground 2 in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1985, and ground 14 in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988.
In Section 10, which proposes to extend the grounds for eviction by introducing a draconian ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, we read: ‘There are existing absolute and discretionary grounds for eviction for anti-social behaviour in the Housing Acts 1985 and 1988.’
Risk that local housing authorities may be tempted to agree
We note that the questions are directed chiefly to local housing authorities and seek to elicit information about their current policies as well as asking their opinion on the proposals. We are concerned that local housing authorities might be tempted to agree with these further restrictions on eligibility for social housing and tenants’ rights, deeply affected as they are by the current severe shortage of social rented housing and their resulting inability to provide even for those currently eligible. This has already resulted in a number of London councils cutting their waiting lists by restricting eligibility, sometimes twice in a decade. The high numbers of people in temporary accommodation or housed in unsuitable private rented housing indicate that these cuts in the waiting lists are not a reflection of need.
The real problem – the severe shortage of social rented housing
We feel that these proposals are, and are possibly intended to be, a distraction from the real problem: the severe shortage of social rented housing.
The document itself says, in its Overview of Proposals: ‘On 31 March 2023, there were 1.29 million households on local authority waiting lists.’
Between 2005 and 2018, an additional 397,000 homes were built in London. Just 12 per cent were social rented, an average of 3,801 each year (Annual Monitoring reports of the London Plan). In 2019/20, of 38,577 homes of all types delivered in London, 30,387 were market homes. Only 822 were social rented (‘Only two per cent of new and additional homes delivered in London in 2019/20 were social rented’, LTF, November 16, 2022).
This contrasts with the Mayor of London’s assessment of Londoners’ housing needs in 2017, the last time such an assessment was completed, which showed that to address existing unmet need and that of newly forming households in the capital, a total of 65,878 additional homes would have to be built each year from 2016-41. 30,972 (47 per cent) would have to be social rented. London’s unmet housing need was 78 per cent social rented (2017 London Strategic Housing Market Assessment). There is no doubt that the need has only grown since then.
Between 1980/81 and 2019/20, 311,305 London homes were sold via Right to Buy, 42 per cent of them (130,748) now being privately let (Inside Housing: ‘London Councils Spend £22 million a year renting Right to Buy homes’).
Since 1997, 55,000 London council homes on 166 estates have been demolished and 131,000 tenants and leaseholders have been displaced (Professor Loretta Lees’s ESRC grant funded research: Gentrification, displacement and impacts of council estate renewal on 21st century London). Over 35,000 homes on 100 plus London estates are at risk of demolition (Estate Watch).
19,960 London social rented homes were converted to ‘affordable’ rents from 2012-20 (GLA Affordable Housing Statistics).
All these factors have reduced the number of desperately needed social rented homes in London.
In 1981, 35 per cent of London homes were social rented (mostly council). By 2019, the capital’s total housing stock had grown by around a million, yet the number of social rented homes had fallen by 146,000. Just 23 per cent of all London homes are now social rented (MHCLG table 100: number of dwellings by tenure and district). Despite its greater insecurity, lower level of regulation and higher cost, 27 per cent of London households live in private rented homes.
This comes at a time when high costs of buying and renting privately, and reduced incomes, higher costs of living and greater job insecurity for many people on below median incomes, mean social rented housing is the only kind which meets their needs. For the three months ending February 2023, the highest unemployment estimate in the UK was London at 4.7 per cent (Labour market in the regions of the UK: April 2023, ONS).
Unfortunately at the same time public subsidy has been increasingly levered in to prop up a failing housing market through schemes such as Help to Buy, Starter and First Homes, and shared ownership. All these types of home are far beyond the pockets of most Londoners.
As highlighted in the Chartered Institute of Housing’s UK Housing Review 2020, the government provides three times more subsidy to prop up private market priced housing than it does for all types of housing described as ‘affordable’ including shared ownership. Distribution of planned government subsidy for new housing 2019-24 was £53.14 billion for private market, first time buyers and infrastructure; £17.98 billion for affordable and low cost home ownership.
Who should have access to social housing?
We would argue against the view of social housing presented in the document.
In Section 1 social rented housing is described as a ‘valuable but limited resource’. The ministerial foreword says: ‘Social housing is a finite resource …to support those who truly need it’. Social housing is only ‘limited’ and ‘finite’ because successive governments have so decided. The neglect, underfunding and loss of social rented housing goes back more than forty years.
In London, because of the sky high house prices and private rents, there are many thousands who ‘truly need’ social rented housing who are not getting it because there is not enough. London councils are paying huge amounts, so much that they risk bankruptcy, to house homeless people in temporary accommodation, often unsuitable and far from temporary, because they have no social rented homes to give them.
In our submission to the APPG on Council Housing, tenants from eight London boroughs reflected on the situation where they live. These examples are from the London Borough of Hackney. The situation in the private rented sector is this: the average rent for a two-bedroom flat was £2,500 per calendar month in 2022, up 14 per cent from 2021. In October 2019, the median market asking rent, as a proportion of median income for two people, was 38 per cent; in October 2023 it had gone up to 44 per cent (Guardian from TwentiCi annual survey of hours and earnings).
In 2022, there were 532 approaches to the council for housing by homeless young people between the ages of 17 and 25. This compares with 119 in 2018.
In Hackney 3,000 households are living in temporary accommodation. With 8,500 on the waiting list (cut from 13,400) in 2019/20, 409 council tenancies became available for offer. In 2020 people typically waited 12 years for a two-bedroom flat. People are being offered ‘personalised support to explore other options to find a home’, which actually means directing them into the private rented sector.
From 2010 to 2022, Hackney Council built just 464 council rented homes in the borough, while during the same period, they sold 895 homes – a net loss of 431 units of public housing.
Dangers in the proposals
Section 13 of the document, Public Sector Equality Duty, points to some of the dangers in some of the draconian policies, like ‘three strikes and you’re out’, proposed in the document.
The section says: ‘The government must have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between different people when carrying out its activities.’ Question 39 asks if there might be ‘a particular impact on those with a particular protected characteristic.’
These proposals run the serious risk that they will be applied over-zealously towards people from already disadvantaged communities, including ethnic minorities. The inclusion of ‘terrorism’ as a new basis for exclusion and even eviction particularly raises the fear of decisions based on uninformed views of particular communities.
The real answer
Instead of attempting to even further restrict access to social rented housing, the government would be better advised to fund a big programme of building, maintenance and buy back of social rented housing to meet the huge unmet need.
We hope the government will consider this approach rather than the approach outlined in the document.