General debate on building safety and social housing, House of Commons, 9 June 2022

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. 

Social housing

  • The LGA continues to support councils to improve their housing management services and engagement with tenants through the delivery of a social housing management peer challenge and promotion of best practice, as part of our sector-led improvement offer.
  • Analysis undertaken in 2019 showed that councils were planning to build more than 77,000 homes in the next five years, and while the implications of COVID-19 will likely impact these projections, councils remain well placed to take a lead role in housebuilding. We welcome the government’s commitment to look at how we can increase supply of social housing and the important role that social housing plays in society.
  • Councils want a series of further policy and fiscal interventions to enable a significant scale-up of council housebuilding. These include further right to buy reform including allowing councils to retain 100 per cent of receipts from the sale of homes, as well as the ability to set discounts locally.  
  • Building 100,000 new social homes with the right infrastructure per year would result in a £14.5 billion boost to the economy. This would kick start our construction sector with 89,000 jobs worth £3.9 billion and adding £4.8 billion, with a further £5.7 to the supply chain.
  • As the amount of social housing has declined the demand for affordable housing has increased. This also means ensuring that households in temporary accommodation can be moved into settled housing. The latest statutory homelessness statistics show that there are currently more than 95,000 households in temporary accommodation. 
  • People want their local area to have high-quality affordable homes built in the right places, supported by the right infrastructure, which provides enough schools, promotes greener and more active travel, and tackles climate change. This can only be achieved through a locally-led planning system with public participation at its heart which enables councils to deliver resilient, prosperous places that meet the needs of their communities. Building Back Locally will ensure that we support the Government’s goal to Build Back Better, driving up housing supply and supporting local areas to deliver more safe, secure, housing that meets local needs.
  • Councils are committed to getting homes built where they are needed but do not have the powers to ensure it happens once planning permission has been granted or when a site has been allocated in a Local Plan. Developers need to be incentivised to build housing more quickly. The sector wants to work with Government on proposals including: a ‘stalled sites’ council tax premium (like the existing empty homes premium); a streamlined compulsory purchase process to acquire (at pre-uplift value) stalled sites or sites where developers do not build out to agreed rates and powers to direct diversification of housing products on sites.