Speech at House of Commons on a new generation of council housing

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to come along today and speak to you about the highly topical research APSE has recently completed for UNISON – A new generation of council housing, an analysis of need, opportunity, vision and skills.

Looking firstly at need, the origins of social housing in this country can be traced to a desperate need for quality, affordable, secure housing at the end of the 19th century. Just over 100 years later social housing is back at the forefront of public policy debate for the same reasons.

In 1997 the incoming Government inherited a £22b backlog of repairs in council housing and set out with vigour to address what was the dominant need at that time, to bring the standard of council housing up to a decent level. With almost 2m names on council house waiting lists and many more living in overcrowded conditions the pressure on Government to deliver more affordable housing has been intense. With Government looking for 3m additional new homes by 2020, the recent failure of the private housing market has only cranked up the need for social housing further.

With registered social landlords and arms length management organizations failing to deliver new housing in any significant numbers Ministers have once again turned to local government to deliver a new generation of council housing in order to meet this need. John Healey as Housing Minister has made more progress in this area in a few months than his predecessors have in 12 years. Whilst some may argue that it’s only a few thousand houses it’s a significant start and a signal of intent.

It’s no secret that council housing has had its doubters over the years and many have questioned whether local government will have the ability to rise to the challenge created by this new agenda after such a long time. That’s what we attempted to assess in undertaking this research amongst 50 councils, main stakeholders and case study work. Can local government really deliver on this agenda?

What we identified was a variable state of readiness within local authorities. We categorized this in 3 broad groupings the ‘trailblazers’, the ‘interested’ and the ‘unaware’.

The ‘trailblazers’ are those who have been pushing for the opportunity to build for a number of years and indeed 49 authorities in England, along with 14 in Scotland, are already engaged in the first phase of building new homes.

The ‘interested’ are those where elected member and officers have seen demand grow significantly over the past few years and have recently become aware of new opportunities created to finance new build council housing but a lack of knowledge after decades of not building has hampered confidence.

The ‘unaware’ are those who are not interested in this agenda politically or who feel that as a result of transferring their housing stock they no longer have a direct role to play in housing provision.

So what are the critical factors in pursuing this agenda? The research identifies the importance of political and strategic vision, clear leadership and a positive culture towards council housing within the local authority; a growing mood for the importance of direct provision; the impact of new central Government policies around financing council new build; the scope of developments, many are looking to build small infill sites in the first instance, but aspire to larger scale later. It also identifies some difficulties with the HCA bidding process and factors such as land availability, maximizing community benefit in the local supply chain and employment. With regard to quality of build, this is not about recreating the sixties high rises.

The research also identifies environmental considerations around carbon reduction, sustainable construction and energy use as significant issues.

Of course any decent size new build programme can provide a huge boost to local economies in difficult times. APSE’s previous research in mapping the economic footprint of local authority spend, which showed that for every £1 Swindon Council spent on their services a further 64p circulates in the local economy through the multiplier effect of local expenditure backs this up. Some of you may also have seen our report for the TUC trailed in the press over the last few days which looks at the impact of the recession on public services. This also demonstrates the importance of continued investment in local services in the current climate.

An important point to emerge from APSEs research for UNISON was that those councils who have retained their ownership and management of housing appear more eager and well placed to pursue house building and therefore help government address what is becoming a huge social need.

However some barriers remain with regards to legislation, finance and technical matters although John is deliberating on the findings of his consultation exercise into some of these issues at present. However, skills and capacity do not appear to be an overwhelming blockage to local councils building housing directly again in significant numbers.

Skills required are split into four sets generic, professional, technical and trades. These are linked to the various stages of building; pre-development; pre and during and on-site.

Whilst not every authority maintains significant capacity in these skill sets at this stage the vast majority believed that this would grow and expand as house building programmes progressed.

Having considered all of the above, the huge need for new homes that has built up, the failure of the housing market to deliver generally, the falling numbers of homes available in the social housing sector over the past decade, the economic necessity and benefit and local governments capacity and capability to deliver in this area, the report calls for the government to place a clear duty on councils to provide homes in the areas they serve, either directly, or in partnerships with RSLs or other bodies.

The report identifies that we have begun the first steps to build a new generation of council housing one that must be constructed with the needs of tenants in mind, to the highest standards of energy efficiency, built in the right places and in communities that are mixed and sustainable.

In closing, John I applaud the progress you have made over the last few months in reintroducing house building amongst councils on a significant scale and I hope that as we progress towards a general election all of the political parties will be attempting to outdo each other on their manifesto commitments on the size and scale of their programme of new build council housing in the future.
Hopefully this will allow council housing to become once again, a quality affordable option for all not just a safety net for some.
Thanks for listening.

A first real test for localism

One of the first tests of David Cameron’s localist credentials, should he be elected as the country’s next Prime Minister, could be to see whether he completes the legislative process Housing Minister John Healey has started by announcing the dismantling of the national housing revenue account system.

With a consultation paper due any day on the matter, the detail of the proposals that many have called for should become clear. However the Minister clearly stated his intention to equalize the existing £17b of overhanging debt across England’s 202 housing authorities in order to allow them to be self financing from that point onwards.

Due to the ongoing failure of the private sector housing market the Government’s aims of building 3m new homes by 2020 look further adrift than ever. Even when economic recovery commences affordability will remain a massive dilemma, unless we see a dramatic increase in supply. Council house waiting lists are sitting at 1.8m, a figure which almost matches the units lost by right to buy and demolition, which have never been replaced by wider social housing providers. With many more living in overcrowded conditions, local authorities are chomping at the bit to aid their communities; the only thing stopping them is the constraints placed upon them by the outdated housing finance system that currently exists.

Government has woken up to the huge public need for affordable housing with the initial £100m new build council housing announcement in the budget, quickly followed by an expansion of this pot to £400m in John Healey’s statement. However it is predicted that this funding will only support some 3,900 units in total. Whilst it is a drop in the ocean, it is at least a start and will see local authorities commence new build council housing for the first time in a generation.

In the late fifties and early sixties 245,000 council houses were being built on average in England per annum, last year it was no more than a few hundred. The LGA estimates that if the primary legislation required to dismantle the national housing revenue account is started by the current government and the process is completed by the next government, whoever that may be, then local housing authorities would be in a position to build an additional 139,000 council houses over the next decade.

Having shared a dinner table with Conservative Shadow Minister Bob Neill recently, I got the impression that this was an agenda the Conservatives were warming towards.

Sunny Harrogate with the LGA

Busy time at the LGA conference this week in Harrogate. Not only is APSE exhibiting at the conference but we also have two strategic forum dinners in the evening and I am also down to speak at one of the lunchtime housing fringes.

The start of the conference is shrouded in speculation as to what announcements the Housing Minister John Healey will make on the review of the National Housing Revenue Account. When he does make his views known at a fringe event they are broadly welcomed by those at the conference but caveat ed by most people wanting to see 'the devil in the detail.' Basically he has suggested a one off equalisation of existing debt across all local authorities with responsibility for housing. He has also announced additional funding for local authority new build.

Our first forum on citizen engagement goes well with a speaker from the Citizen's Advice Bureau explaining how they interact with local government and the crucial role they play in the current climate. They receive £67m in funding from local authorities, dealing with 1.93m clients per annum which leads to 6m problems being dealt with. 2m of these have been debt related in the last year which is an increase of 11%, benefits inquiries have also risen by 13%, with redundancy queries by 17% making an overall rise of 9%.

The next evening we host a debate around the housing announcements in an attempt to get our heads around what it all means in practice.

On the final day I get into the hall to see economic visionary Vince Cable. It's not good news. Vince uses the analogy of most people thinking that the economy has caught a cold when really it has had a heart attack. Like all heart attack victims it's a long and painful road to recovery and one that can suffer serious relapses at any given moment in time.

Next up is David Cameron who gives an honest assessment of the impact the global recession will have on our own public finances in the coming years. He doesn't pull any punches and talks about giving more power to local authorities but with less money. He talks about a post bureaucratic age and raises the spectre of google government, where people will be able to go online and view any item of expenditure a local authority has made of above £500 in value. Running through his speech is a thread of doing more for less and achieving value for money.

All in all a successful few days for APSE having plenty of visits to our stand, meeting a lot of our key people and picking up some pieces of work whilst there.

Pressure building

Speak at a Housing conference organised by Unite in London today. The event is opened by new Housing Minister John Healey, who is followed by Unite Deputy General Secretary Jack Dromey. Gail Cartmel of Unite then Chairs a debate with Sir Jeremy Beecham representing the LGA, Unite Head of Research John Earls and myself representing APSE.

There is a real mood of change about with the recent funding announcements on new build for councils and the imminent report back of the findings of the review of the national housing revenue account.

Despite only being in the job a week or two there is a real expectation that a respected Minister such as John Healey will deliver in this area.

It's a generation since local authorities built council housing to any significant scale but given the current need for affordable housing it really is bubbling up as one of the great public policy debates of today.

Putting a roof over peoples heads!

Chaired an APSE / ARCH debate today at Parliament on Councils being allowed to once again build a significant level of council housing directly themselves.

It is amazing how quickly political theory changes, if you had talked about Councils being able to build council housing a year or two back you would have been laughed at and branded a Neanderthal. Now everyone recognises that it would make a good start to getting the economy moving again and provide much needed affordable housing.

With over 60 senior elected members and officers from local authorities present along with MPs, ministerial advisers and the press it was an interesting debate.

What we all agreed on was that Government would need to make some or all of the following changes if progress is to be made on this agenda.

• Secure receipts from Right to Buy sales for investment in new homes
• Enable borrowing against future rental income to take place outside of the public sector borrowing regime, within a robust fiscal framework, in line with other European countries
• Apply a broader scope, less bureaucracy and greater freedoms to current proposals for changes to revenue and capital rules
• Provide pump-priming resources from the Homes and Communities Agency
• Provide a level playing filed with other social landlords in terms of access to Social Housing Grant
• Reform the Housing Revenue Account subsidy system, which is currently under review, to enable council building to take place
• Allow historic debts – which have been repaid several times over – to be kept separate from new debts incurred to build new homes
• Enable councils to own and manage developments directly rather than having to use complex special purpose vehicles

It should be interesting to see what the Chancellor announces in the budget in a couple of weeks time.

Building Council Housing

Chair a debate on Housing between the four main political parties in Scotland at our Peebles conference. Livingston MSP, Angela Constance opens on behalf of the SNP Government, Derek Brownlee MSP responds on behalf of the Conservatives, Jeremy Purvis MSP on behalf of the Liberal Democrats and Cllr Jim McCabe, Labour Group Leader on CoSLA on behalf of the Scottish Labour Party.

The main focus is on the state of the economy but also on the fact that the public sector has a huge roll in helping in the recovery from recession. Having said that Derek and Jeremy provide a fairly forensic analysis of the depressing state of public finances between now and 2015.

All of the panelists and audience agree however that we need to build more council housing and a general mood exists that suggests a lack of balance between the £25m pot available for council new build in Scotland and the £100m available to Housing Associations. Especially when the Housing Associations appear slow of the mark with new build and ongoing rumours about their ability to secure additional borrowing from the banks. I think this is something that needs to be revisited quickly if the fiscal stimulus is to have any immediate impact.

A point made by Jeremy shed some new light on how public finances operate for me. Jeremy stated that he had taken a lot of flak in Parliament for speaking out against the Bill to introduce free school meals. He pointed out that the £40m per annum transferred to revenue spending to cover this could have been used to borrow up to £1B of capital infrastructure spending over the period. He made a compelling case as to how this may be a more important priority for the economy at this present moment in time!

London calling!

Spend a couple of days in London speaking at two different housing conferences and meeting up with some colleagues.

My first stop was the Association of Retained Council Housing conference were I followed the DCLG and Audit Commission speakers. I gave an overview of where I believe the Housing market is at present. Firstly there is huge demand for affordable housing, fanned by the economic downturn and the failure of the wider sector to provide new affordable options since local authorities hands have been tied on the matter. When times are tough people always look to their local councils for help and I believe that local authorities should be part of the solution by being encouraged to build stock that gives security of tenancy, is of a quality standard, is affordable and is democratically accountable. Another issue that needs resolved in the current review of the National Housing Revenue Account is to finally ensure that local authorities who have retained their stock are treated no less favourably than those who have transferred to ALMO's or RSL's.

On returning to my hotel I bump into APSE's National Chair, Cllr Arwyn Woolcock who is on his way to meet with Peter Hain MP at the House of Commons, he tells me that Peter has also got him tickets for the public gallery for the Chancellors Pre Budget Report. Following a quick discussion and a few telephone calls I also gain tickets and get across to the commons in time to capture Alistair Darling's speech. £21b of investment in the economy is a lot of money in anyone's book and the £3b of public sector infrastructure investment brought forward is welcome. However I can't help but think how difficult it will be to pay back the additional £5b of efficiency savings now required by 2011 and to absorb the projected £37b less of public sector investment, following the next general election.

I end my trip by attending the Guardian Public Sector Awards in Old Billingsgate Market on the edge of the Thames and it cheers me up to see so many excellent initiatives and good news stories happening across the public sector sphere.

Young guns - go for it!

Made a mad dash across to Sheffield tonight to present APSE's apprentice awards for Housing and Building Maintenance. It's always an event I look forward too, as this is the area I started out in when I joined local government 25 years ago.

The awards ceremony is packed and it's a great opportunity for the young people to gain some recognition for their outstanding achievements over the past year. APSE have been working with the Construction Youth Trust over the past 18 months to encourage and support women within the industry. This resulted in us passing grants to local authorities of some £60,000 to establish mentoring schemes for young females.

Back to the awards and the winners were:

Female Buiding Skills: Heidi Spivey, Kirklees Council
Female Mechanical and Electrical: Rae Crown, Nottingham City Homes
Male Building Skills: Mitchel Barguss, Neath Port Talbot Council
Male Mechanical and Electrical: David Hunter, Falkirk Council

A great time was had by all 16 who were shortlisted, they were all winners in their own right as over 50 who submitted didn't make it that far.

Conference season begins!

At the LGA conference this week in Bournemouth and its the usual gathering of the great and good from the local government world.

Arrive down on the Monday night and once we have dropped of our exhibition stand its straight into the networking opportunities that are so useful at this type of event. Go out for something to eat with a long standing friend who is a local authority chief executive and we catch up on what has been happening in recent months around reorganisation, commissioning and the upcoming white papers themes.

The Tuesday sees the full opening of the conference and its busy around our stand most of the day. I go out with colleagues from Northamptonshire County Council and gather some useful information on what they are doing with scrutiny. On the Wednesday I end up being roped into speaking at a Housing fringe and the timing turns out to be useful as the LGA launches a major change in policy that morning. They along with a number of other organisations are now supporting vociferously the replacement of the current housing finance system and its replacement with one which provides a sustainable solution to funding, managing, maintaining and improving stock, whatever stock ownership option authorities choose. APSE has pushed this line for years.

MJ editor Michael Burton goads me into meeting him at 8am on the Thursday morning to go for a swim in the sea and when we arrive Nottingham City Council Leader Jon Collins is just emerging from the waves. We end up getting our photo taken with a copy of the MJ. Anything for a bit of cheap publicity!

Need to leave at 11.30am for meetings in London but before I go I visit the main hall to hear David Cameron's speech to conference. He is very engaging with the audience, speaks without a script and answers questions from all round the hall. This is not the usual stage managed stuff and he comes across as having a wide knowledge of local government. What he said was if/when he is Prime Minister he will bring forward a local government bill early aimed at pursuing devolution of power to local authorities but they then must also devolve to the private, voluntary and third sectors to deliver. Its classic Conservative policy of reduce state provision by involving the market (this time several sectors of it). I wasn't about to hear Hazel Blears in the afternoon, but I would expect the message would have been almost identical. I did notice that the bits about devolving power to the community and his call for elected mayors were not met by rapturous applause and I overheard a couple of Senior Conservative Councillors near me comment "What was the point of us working hard to get almost 50% of council seats in England, if we are now going to give everything away".

Reflecting on the week, we have met up with a number of senior people from APSE member authorities, raised our profile as an organisation, picked up a couple of strong leads on consultancy jobs and made some useful contacts.

Now or Never for Council Housing!

Participated in the first meeting of the DCLG National Housing Revenue Account (HRA) review group at Parliament today. It was really interesting and something that is long overdue, its time policymakers got over themselves and realised that Council Housing is a quality affordable option that is staring them in the face to deal with the affordable Housing crisis.

Although it was a Chatam House rules event I think I can tell you that the Housing Minister Caroline Flint opened up by outlining her views of the role of the review and we then split into two groups of ten to fifteen people to discuss the terms of reference we had. I was in the group with the other DCLG Minister present, Ian Wright and he quickly threw things open to views. I steamed in straight away and said I thought the scope was to narrow and we needed to consider issues such as local authorities being involved in new build and the wider role that local authorities had other than Housing. I was pleasantly surprised to find a number of people supported this view. We will see what happens as to incorporation of this in the review.

The review will not be finalised until next year with findings not implemented until October 2009. Hopefully we will have regular involvement in this group and I will continue to pursue APSEs lobbying position in this area.

Debating Governance with the Government!

APSE participated in a number of events on the Labour Party fringe at their spring conference this weekend.

During Saturday lunch time we held a fringe on Governance, Neighbourhoods and Service Delivery where APSEs Mark Bramah and Steve Griggs of INLOGOV were joined by Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON and DCLG Minister John Healey MP to debate Governance, Neighbourghoods and Service Delivery at a fringe event chaired by Michael White of the Guardian.

Mo Baines stood in for me at the UNISON fringe on 'Public Sector Reform - what about the workers?', this debate included contributions from Local Government Minister Hazel Blears and UNISONs Head of Local Government, Heather Wakefield.

In the evening a fringe took place on 'affordable housing for all', Mark Bramah spoke for APSE along with Heather Wakefield and Jack Dromey of UNITE.

Question time!

Chaired the political debate at APSE's annual Scottish Housing conference at Peebles Hydro and its one of the most enjoyable events that I have been involved in for ages.

Alex Neil MSP spoke for the Government and Derek Brownlee MSP responded for the Conservatives, Andy Kerr MSP for Labour and Jim Tolson MSP for the Lib dems. The theme was a general 'how can local government deliver best value in the future' and this allowed us to cover many areas but with an emphasis on housing. We also touched on equal pay, ringfencing, community benefits and skills shortages. I got to play David Dimblbey as we moved on to question time and all of the MSPs did admirably, the delegates were certainly happy and the session was packed out with brilliant feedback.

Although I had a few nervous moments when Alex suggested that we should look at the performance management system that is used in Virginia in America, I could almost sense the phrase study tour being telepathically transmitted to me from members of our Scottish Regional and National Councils.

I also managed to sit in on the housing green paper debate in the afternoon where Alan Ferguson from Chartered Institute of Housing, Jim Hayton, Executive Director of Housing South Lanarkshire and Matt Smith from UNISON made their contributions. Again the quality of debate and information was first class. I was very impressed with Jim's analysis and his assessment of the key role local authorities must play in conjunction with other partners if the public's needs are to be met.

Our apprentice awards dinner took place on the Thursday night and our Policy, Performance and Scrutiny Committee met on the Friday morning. The event was a busy few days but the conference itself was our best Scottish Housing conference in years.