The LGA has called on the Government to provide councils with the powers and tools to reverse the chronic shortage of social housing, including giving councils powers to build 100,000 high-quality, climate-friendly social homes a year.
Key messages
- The LGA welcomed the Building Safety Act 2022, which sought to strengthen the building safety systems in the UK especially in relation to new buildings. The Act impacts councils as duty holders and as regulators and impacts fire and rescue services as regulators.
- Delivery of the new building safety regime is dependent on council building control and the fire service. It remains to be seen whether the recently agreed funding to expand building control and fire service capacity to take on this new work is adequate.
- The developer levy to fund the remediation of dangerous cladding is welcome but should not be imposed on social housing landlords. We ask that councils become exempt from the Levy.
- The construction industry must also be made to fix the fire safety defects it has built into blocks owned by councils and housing associations. Unless the Government forces the industry to act – or provides taxpayer funding – we are concerned that the costs of fixing social housing blocks could fall on council housing revenue accounts and housing associations, punishing social housing tenants and those on the waiting list.
- Councils already play a vital role in housing supply as planning and housing authorities, as partners with house builders and registered providers, as direct builders, as providers of homes for the most vulnerable and as local place leaders. Local authorities have historically played a key role in delivering housing at scale in England.
- Social housing should be treated as an important national investment and seen as a desirable long-term option for a home. Councils have a key role to play in this.
- The LGA has called on the Government to provide councils with the powers and tools to reverse the chronic shortage of social housing, including giving councils powers to build 100,000 high-quality, climate-friendly social homes a year. Councils want to encourage home ownership, without a corresponding decline in the number of social rented homes. It is essential that Right to Buy is reformed further so that councils can build more genuinely affordable homes, by allowing councils to keep 100 per cent of receipts from homes sold to reinvest in housing delivery.
- The LGA want to work with the Government and the Social Housing Regulator to ensure that there is a proportionate, risk-based approach to inspection and needs urgent clarity on how this will be delivered and funded. A sector-led improvement approach through use of peer reviews and performance benchmarking, could provide a complementary, or even an alternative approach to inspection.
- The LGA would welcome more clarity on the proposal to enable the Social Housing Regulator to act more quickly and take action where it has concerns about the decency of a home. Social housing landlords should be allowed to and supported to manage their own journey on continuous improvement, with the Regulator’s activity prioritising intervention with landlords that are experiencing the most severe challenges. This approach would make best use of limited resources for both council landlords and the Regulator.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Building safety
- The LGA welcomed the Building Safety Act 2022, which sought to strengthen the building safety systems in the UK especially in relation to new buildings. The Act impacts councils as duty holders and as regulators and impacts fire and rescue services as regulators.
- Delivery of the new building safety regime is dependent on the fire service and council building control, which needs to focus on the people, recruitment, and retention of staff to support this. It remains to be seen whether the recently agreed funding to expand building control and fire service capacity to take on this new work is adequate
- The LGA has taken significant action around Personal Emergency Evacuation Plans (PEEPs) for disabled residents. The proposed Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing (EEIS) would require Responsible Persons of the highest risk buildings to assess the needs of their most vulnerable residents and consider what might reasonably be done to mitigate any risks to fire safety. However, the proposal does not require building owners to act and would leave disabled residents waiting for fire service rescue while everyone else is told to leave the building. The LGA does not regard this as acceptable. The EEIS consultation followed a consultation of fire safety and a subsequent PEEPs consultation in July 2021 which has concluded. The LGA responded to both, calling for the establishment of a committee to bring landlords and disabled residents together to discuss the practicalities of implementing PEEPs. The Government response to the second consultation agreed that this committee be established to look at the issue of neighbour assistance.
- We agree that no leaseholder should have to pay the costs of making their homes safe and the Secretary of State’s previous (10 January 2022) commitment to explore the use of the legal system to ensure developers meet their responsibilities to leaseholders is a positive step in the right direction. However, the Government has not covered all the costs leaseholders face and leaseholders are not the only victims of the construction industry’s failure to build safe homes.
Social housing