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Immigrant housing bias is myth, says report

July 7th, 2009 | No Comments

Equalities watchdog heads off BNP rumours as study finds only 1.8% of social tenants have moved to the UK recently

Claims that immigrants are given priority access to social housing have been dismissed as a myth by the equalities watchdog.

A study for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that only 1.8% of social tenants are immigrants who had moved to the UK in the past five years.

Some 87.8% were UK-born. Foreigners who had been living in Britain for more than five years made up 10% of social housing.

The study, based on previously published figures from the 2007 Labour Force Survey, was conducted by the centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank.

Its report, commissioned by the EHRC, comes amid heightened concern about gains in recent elections by the British National party (BNP).

The far-right party spread rumours in target seats that immigrants were given precedence in the queue for social housing accommodation.

Gordon Brown last week announced plans to allow local authorities to give priority to local people, in what was seen as an attempt to head off the BNP’s claims.

The IPPR found no evidence of queue-jumping or abuse of the system by immigrants, but warned that those perceptions were widespread in certain areas.

Trevor Phillips, EHRC’s chairman, said: “We have to recognise that people’s perceptions are powerful, so it’s vital that social housing providers and policymakers work to foster understanding about what is really happening on the ground.

“Much of the public concern about the impact of migration on social housing has, at its heart, the failure of social housing supply to meet the demands of the population. The poorer the area, the longer the waiting lists, therefore the greater the tension. Government and social housing providers need to work with the communities they serve to address these issues.”

John Healey, the housing minister, said the belief that immigrants were favoured in the allocation of council homes was “largely a problem of perception”.

But he rejected suggestions that Brown’s policy of allowing councils to give greater priority to local people was therefore addressing a mythical problem.

“At present, those people with the most serious housing needs get priority. We are not changing that,” Healey told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

“But there is more we can do to give local authorities freedom and scope to give more preference. In some areas, they may want to give people who have waited the longest preference. In some areas, they may want to give preference to people who have moved to take up work.

“They may want, in rural areas, to give preference to those with local connections or their preference may be to reduce overcrowding or attract skilled workers. I am not going to change the rules that mean new migrants don’t have a right to sign up to council housing. I am not going to remove the requirement to give priority to those in most serious need.

“But there is more that we can do and more leeway we can give local authorities to be able to respond to particular pressures they face in their area or allow them to give more priority and preference – after they have dealt with the most serious housing need – to those that they want to support.”

Healey added: “All of this is no substitute for building more homes.”

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England set for council house revival

July 6th, 2009 | No Comments

• Cash infusion may reverse historic decline
• Government move has economic and political motives

Council house building is to restart in earnest for the first time in almost 20 years in England with local authorities set to construct 139,000 homes over the next decade. Town halls have predicted that rule changes announced by ministers last week allowing them to retain rent from council housing and receipts from right-to-buy purchasers, rather than the money going to the Treasury, mean that building is set to return to levels not seen since 1990.

It will reverse a dramatic decline in council house building that began in the 1950s when local authorities built as many as 245,000 units a year and reshaped the nation’s skyline with tower blocks and cottage-style brick terraces. In the 21st century as few as 130 council houses have been built each year.

“We could be on the verge of the biggest programme of council house building in a generation,” said Matt Nicholls, housing spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents English local authorities. “Councils haven’t had the financial freedom to build new homes. They have not been able to keep the rent or money from the sale of homes and have not been able to borrow against their assets to build houses in the same way housing associations have.”

Councils across England of all political colours are filing applications for £350m in direct funding that is being provided by Whitehall.

“There is demand everywhere, rural and urban,” said Sir Bob Kerslake, chief executive of the government’s Homes and Communities Agency, which will distribute the funds. “Before this extra money came through, Birmingham city council, which is Conservative-controlled, said they could spend all of the £100m we had for the whole country.”

Birmingham is planning to build 500 council houses a year within three years and become the biggest council housebuilder in England.

The new houses are much needed. Five million people will be on the waiting list for social housing by 2012 and the credit crunch has dramatically reduced housebuilding. But they will not be enough to fully meet demand and government officials conceded that the policy, which includes spending £350m directly on new homes, is partly political.

“Some of this is about Gordon Brown keeping the parliamentary Labour party happy,” said a senior government housing official. “Some is about trying to do something quickly at a time when the market is struggling to deliver as a result of the problems with development finance. There is also a feeling that they might as well spend, spend, spend because they will probably be out of office soon.”

The HCA estimates that just 90,000 homes of all types will be built this financial year, less than half the government’s target of 240,000 completions a year. The scale of the problem is illustrated in the north London borough of Islington where the council will complete 10 new council houses this summer, but has a waiting list of 15,000 for social housing.

“Housebuilding is unprecedentedly low,” said Kerslake. “Over the last 20 years completions fluctuated, averaging around 120,000. But even at the peak of the buoyant market we didn’t hit the target.”

This time, instead of building large estates the government wants small clusters of 30 to 40 homes built on infill sites and will insist that they are indistinguishable from private housing.

“Nobody wants to go back to big, sprawling estates occupied only by council tenants,” said Kerslake. “Instead, you won’t be able to see the difference between council housing and private housing.”

Family houses rather than two-bedroom flats will be prioritised and councils will be encouraged to use redundant land, such as sites of disused garages, instead of building on green belt.

But with so few councils building homes in the last 20 years, there are doubts over the quality of the design they will produce. A survey published in April by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment revealed that 83% of affordable housing schemes were judged of average or poor design quality, worse than market housing.

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Brown to take £22m from London budget

July 3rd, 2009 | No Comments

Raid on mayor of London’s funds intended to pay for government housing programmes

Gordon Brown was today accused of using Boris Johnson’s economic development budget for London as a “piggy bank” for pet national projects as it emerged the government plans to raid £22m from the London Development Agency budget to help fund a national housing programme announced earlier this week.

The capital’s Conservative mayor branded the move “completely unacceptable” and said it will “severely disrupt” the LDA’s ability to deliver on his priorities for London’s economic development.

In a test of strength over his elected role as mayor of London, Johnson wrote in a letter to business secretary Lord Mandelson that the government was “ignoring” the fact that he was elected to run the capital and he argued that London’s “unique governance arrangement” meant that it should be exempt from the cut.

“I do not have difficulty with the government’s right to review national priorities and, for example, decide that money previously assigned and announced for economic development should now fund housing. But such reviews cannot ignore the capital’s unique governance arrangements and the whole point of the devolution settlement for London,” he wrote.

“Quite simply, a decision to make a further cut in the funding of the LDA would undermine the agency’s ability to deliver on mayoral priorities for London’s economic development. The mooted cut in the LDA’s budget is therefore completely unacceptable.”

The government is planning to take money out of the country’s nine regional development agencies to help fund the housing programmes announced in Building Britain’s Future on Monday.

This includes between £4-5m from the LDA in the current financial year, and £17m in 2010-11, according to Johnson.

In his letter, the Conservative mayor sought assurance that “the mooted cut will not take place” and requested an end to raids on budgets after they had been agreed.

Johnson’s policy director, Anthony Browne, said Johnson was kicking up a fuss because this was the fifth time the government had sought to cut the LDA budget in the past 18 months.

“The LDA is supposed to be the mayor’s development agency, answerable to the mayor who signs off the budget. The government is treating it like its own piggy bank for its favourite national projects. It undermines the mayor’s elected mandate.”

The LDA is already under financial pressure after identifying a black hole of between £60-100m in its finances, which is expected to affect future commitments planned by the mayoralty.

In a sternly worded letter, Johnson said the latest proposed cut of £21m, on top of the £70m previously taken out of the LDA budgets, brought the total to £90m.

“None of these cuts was ever discussed in advance with me – or, in the case of the first cut, with my predecessor [Ken Livingstone]. They were simply imposed. The LDA’s budget for 2009-10 and 2010-11 is now fully committed and further cuts, on top of the previous four cuts and the reprioritisation that the LDA has had to undertake in relation to Olympic budgets, would severely disrupt the agency’s ability to deliver its contribution to my priorities. It would almost certainly mean the LDA having to go back on funding commitments.”

Johnson added that while money invested by the LDA would have a direct benefit to London, there was “no certainty” over what share of the national housing programme would come to the capital.

Mandelson’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) has been contacted for comment.

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Bang goes the green homes promise

July 1st, 2009 | No Comments

Bang goes its promise of efficient homes; bang goes the green new deal. How will the government meet its obligations under the Climate Change Act?

I’ve asked this question before, but the mystery seems only to thicken: how in God’s name does the government intend to meet its obligations under the Climate Change Act?

Its programme for cutting carbon through renewable energy is way behind schedule. It is expanding airports and motorways, while bailing out the car industry, ensuring that motor emissions stay high. The EU emissions trading scheme hardly touches the industries it is meant to regulate. Full carbon capture and storage will come too late to stop new coal-burning power stations from adding greatly to the problem.

I cannot understand how these policies can be reconciled with a legally binding 80% cut by 2050, let alone a 34% cut by 2020. When compared to real policies, the cuts predicted by its Committee on Climate Change look like pure wishful thinking.

But at least the government seemed to be getting something right. It was making what looked like bold moves to improve our housing stock, insisting that all new homes be zero carbon by 2016 and launching a scheme to improve the energy efficiency of existing stock. Even if nothing else was working, one sector would be making carbon cuts commensurate with the government’s legal obligations. Or so we thought.

Much of the improvement in existing housing stock was meant to have been delivered through tightening the building regulations. From next year, the government had promised us, the energy efficiency of existing homes would have to be improved whenever they were substantially refurbished or extended or their lofts were converted. This was the most important of the government’s energy efficiency reforms, which was meant to have delivered the biggest carbon saving. It also had the potential to employ a carbon army of insulators and draft stoppers: tens of thousands of people who could be taken from the dole queue and quickly trained.

But a fortnight ago, the government suddenly dumped this plan, when it published its new consultation document on Part L of the building regs. It’s the second time this has happened: the government broke the same promise in 2006. Bang goes its promise of efficient homes; bang goes the green new deal. Why?

The only explanation I can think of is that it fears a populist backlash. It’s not hard to imagine the tabloid fulminations about snooping inspectors invading the sanctity of our homes, the big brother state telling us how to live. But the stupid thing is that building inspectors are meant to sign off all substantial works anyway: to implement the energy regulations they would only have had to add one or two more lines to their check list. Like the other building regs – which protect us from fire, collapse, electrocution, explosions and the rest – the proposed new intrusion would have done us a favour, ensuring that we don’t spend hundreds of pounds a year heating the air outside our homes, rather than the air inside. It would have helped to protect homeowners from cowboy builders. But the government is so paralysed by the fear of middle class reaction that it won’t implement even the simplest measures to help us improve our own lives.

So where will its carbon cuts come from? I was mystified before; now I am utterly baffled. Can anyone help me out?

monbiot.com

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PM’s council house plan stirs migrant debate

June 29th, 2009 | No Comments

• ‘Local’ people to be given priority for social housing
• Policy sets out rights from education to policing

Local people are to get greater priority on social housing lists, the government is to announce as it discards its former reliance on centrally controlled targets and ushers in new “entitlements” across all elements of the welfare state.

Ending the target culture established by his predecessor, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown will shift evaluation of public services away from Whitehall to the public, saying that people should have entitlements to personal tuition in schools, minimum GP waiting times and access to police working in neighbourhoods.

Though the prime minister plans to hand to the public the power to evaluate whether they have been adequately cared for, details of what redress people will get will follow in another paper, due to be published in the next few months.

The plan – Building Britain’s Future – is likely to form the basis for Labour’s policy platform before the next general election, and elements of it appear to be an attempt to drain support from far-right parties which blame immigrants for housing shortages. In the European elections three weeks ago, the BNP won two seats in the European parliament.

The policy of greater priority for local people in social housing is likely to attract criticism from senior Labour figures that the entire relaunch is an overtly populist package.

When the then minister Margaret Hodge first suggested in May 2007 that council house allocation should be dependent on length of residence and national insurance payment details, the then mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, said such a move would be “illegal” and “wrong”. Though Hodge used the same language the government uses now, describing a “legitimate sense of entitlement felt by the indigenous family” Livingstone accused her of “magnifying the propaganda of the British National party”.

The then deputy leadership contender Jon Cruddas was also uncomfortable with “racialising arguments over housing allocation” rather than concentrating on the need for more social housing.

But the government may avert this with another element of the package, likely to include a wave of construction of social and affordable housing.

The document will make the current 18-week NHS waiting list target an obligation; alongside a right to a free health test for anybody between the age of 40 and 74. At the moment primary care trusts are not obliged to offer either service.

Cancer patients will also be given the right to private healthcare if NHS hospitals can not see them within two weeks, with the bill met within existing funds.

New rights to one-on-one tuition will be extended into early secondary education.

The policy reboot has to be pulled off against allegations of a dwindling set of ideas after 12 years in government, and diminished public funding.

The Tory leader, David Cameron, has called on the prime minister to apologise after he said that capital expenditure would rise every year to 2012, when it will actually fall after 2010. In an interview with the Guardian on Saturday, the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, confirmed that while current or “day-to-day” spending may rise, capital spending would fall after the current burst to kickstart the economy. The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, appeared to suggest on Radio 4′s Any Questions that his department would have less to spend after the next election.

Yesterday the children’s secretary, Ed Balls, told the BBC’s Sunday AM programme the government had to be “defter and smarter”. Balls, who will also publish an education white paper on Tuesday, insisted the government’s spending plans could be met, despite tough conditions.

Balls is adamant that as the economic outlook improves, Labour will be able to “release resources” to key areas. But he did appear to have modified his position, saying: “We are increasing investment this year and next year.”

The work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the targets had helped to drive improvements in a range of public services, but that the new strategy was about improving accountability.

She told BBC1′s Politics Show: “Having made those improvements, the next step we now need is to be able to say, ‘okay, those services are now accountable to local people’. Local people should be entitled to things from their health service, from their education service, and that’s how we measure improvements in future.”

Cooper was unable to say what will happen if the entitlements were not met and insisted the new rights were not a “lawyers’ charter”.

Byrne said that the rules might see patients able to commission a greater number of doctors if waiting lists lengthen, neighbourhood police being ordered to hold local meetings, and councils required to find alternative social care.

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