Building Safety Regulator
On 20 January 2020 the Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick announced various new measures to improve building safety. These included the immediate establishment in ‘shadow form’ of the Building Safety Regulator within the Health and Safety Executive. The new regulator will seek to raise building safety and performance standards, and to oversee a new, more stringent regime for higher-risk buildings. For the announcement of this and other measures, click here.
Building safety advice for building owners, including fire doors
On 20 January 2020 the Independent Expert Advisory Panel published ‘Building safety advice for building owners, including fire doors’, which brings together a number of advice notes for building owners on the measures they should take to ensure their buildings are safe. The advice makes clear that ACM cladding (and other metal composite material cladding) with an unmodified polyethylene filler (category 3) presents a significant fire hazard on residential buildings at any height with any form of insulation. It covers the safety of external wall systems (including spandrel panels and balconies), smoke control systems, fire doors and what short-term measures should be put in place should a significant safety issue be identified. For the advice note, click here.
The Government has also launched a consultation into the current combustible cladding ban, including proposals to lower the 18 metre height threshold to at least 11 metres. For the consultation document, see Housing Law Consultations.
Recalcitrant building owners to be named
On 20 January 2020, as part of the announcement of measures to improve building safety, the Housing Secretary warned that “the slow pace of improving building safety standards will not be tolerated” and that from next month building owners who have not taken action to make their buildings safe will be named. For the announcement, click here. For an article in The Guardian, click here.
For a response by CIH to the Government’s announcement, click here. For that of the National Housing Federation, click here.
Private renting: Shelter survey
On 15 January 2020 Shelter published the results of a survey of private renters conducted by YouGov. The survey found that almost one in four private renters – equivalent to two million adults – have felt physically ill or sick because of housing problems or worries in the last year. Forty-five per cent of private renters (or 3.8 million adults) have experienced stress and anxiety as a direct result of their housing concerns, with nearly one in three (2.8 million adults) saying this has kept them awake at night. Almost the same number of renters said their housing situation had left them feeling hopeless (2.7 million adults). For more details of the survey, click here. For the response of the Local Government Association, click here.
The Guardian is seeking responses from anyone who is living in private rental accommodation and been made physically or mentally ill due to issues surrounding their living situation. To share such experiences with the newspaper, click here.
Local Housing Allowance increase
On 13 January 2020 the Department for Work and Pensions announced that Local Housing Allowance rates will rise by inflation (ie 1.7 per cent) from April 2020. The DWP estimates that there are around 1.4 million people in the private rental sector receiving Local Housing Allowance, and this change will provide an average of around £10 extra a month to affected households in the private rented sector. The increase is effected by the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Amendment) Order 2020, as to which see below. For the DWP announcement of the increase, click here. For a response by Crisis, click here. For comment by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, click here. For a blog article by Shelter chief executive Polly Neate, click here.
Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Amendment) Order 2020
This order, which comes into force on 30 January 2020, amends the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997, the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) (Scotland) Order 1997, and the Rent Officers (Universal Credit Functions) Order 2013 (the Orders) to make changes to the manner in which a local housing allowance is determined. Articles 2, 3, and 4 amend the Orders to provide that, for any category of dwelling (or accommodation, in relation to Universal Credit), the local housing allowance is the lowest of: the rent at the 30th percentile for the broad rental market area in question, determined in accordance with the Orders; the local housing allowance as last determined, increased by 1.7 per cent; and the maximum housing allowance for the category of dwelling in question. The increase of 1.7 per cent in the local housing allowance as last determined is representative of the increase in the Consumer Price Index over 12 months as determined by the Office for National Statistics in September 2019. These articles also provide for revised amounts of the maximum housing allowance for specified categories of dwellings (or accommodation, in relation to Universal Credit), and make consequential changes.
For the order, click here. For the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997, click here. For the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) (Scotland) Order 1997, click here. For the Rent Officers (Universal Credit Functions) Order 2013, click here.
Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 1 report
On 21 January 2020 the House of Commons held a general debate on the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's Phase 1 Report. For the Hansard record of the debate, click here. For a briefing produced by the Local Government Association, click here. For a background briefing concerning the government’s response to the fire, published by the House of Commons Library, click here.
Homes and Communities Agency (Transfer of Property etc.) Regulations 2020
These regulations come into force on 7 February 2020. Section 53A(1) of the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 allows the Secretary of State to make one or more schemes for the transfer to the Homes and Communities Agency of designated property, rights or liabilities of a specified public body. These Regulations specify Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and Staffordshire County Council for that purpose. For the regulations, click here. For the 2008 Act, click here.
Jobcentres funded to support homeless people
On 13 January 2020 the Department for Work and Pensions announced new funding of £3 million which will enable jobcentre staff to join outreach teams on the streets to speak to people sleeping rough, in order to help them claim their benefits, find new work, secure stable accommodation and direct them to additional support. The funding will also be used to bolster projects jobcentres are already working on with various organisations, such as the Salvation Army in Cardiff, and Teardrops in St Helens, to support homeless claimants. For the announcement, click here.
Index of Private Housing Rental Prices: December 2019
On 15 January 2020 the Office for National Statistics published an index tracking the prices paid for renting property from private landlords in Great Britain during December 2019. Private rental prices paid by tenants rose by 1.4 per cent in the 12 months to December 2019, unchanged since November 2019. Private rental prices grew by 1.4 per cent in England, 1.2 per cent in Wales, and by 0.6 per cent in Scotland in the 12 months to December 2019. London private rental prices rose by 1.2 per cent in the 12 months to December 2019, up from 1.0 per cent in November 2019. For the full index, click here.
Shared ownership campaign: National Housing Federation
National Housing Federation is launching a nationwide campaign to “help create a consistent and clear message about shared ownership that the whole sector can get behind, and make it front and centre of [the] housing offer”. To support advertising of the campaign NHF has created a new website, at SharedOwnership.net, designed to help people understand more about the product, and whether it might be the right solution for them. For a blog piece by chief executive Kate Henderson, click here; and for the new website, click here.
Private rental growth indices: October to December 2019
On 15 January 2020 the Office for National Statistics published an article comparing growth, during October to December 2019, in the Index of Private Housing Rental Prices (which measures the change in price of renting residential property from private landlords) with other measures of private rental growth. The article states that once adjustments are made for differences in what the indices are measuring, the ONS measures of rents are more closely aligned with the other sources of rental prices. The article is part of a series that explains the reason for these differences in more detail. For the article, click here.
Loneliness Annual Report: the first year
On 20 January 2020 the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport published the first Annual Report on tackling loneliness which provides a progress update since the publication of the cross-government Loneliness Strategy in October 2018. For the report, click here. For the Loneliness Strategy, click here.
Housing adaptations – Wales
On 20 January 2020 the Welsh Government published research into how the housing adaptations programme has performed between April 2018 and March 2019. The total number of adaptations recorded in 2018-19 was 30,235. Two out of three of all adaptations recorded (66 per cent) were delivered by Care & Repair agencies. Local authorities delivered 28 per cent and housing associations 6 per cent. Of the 19,744 adaptations delivered by local Care & Repair agencies, 18,884 (96 per cent) cost £500 or less. Local authorities undertook 391 adaptations costing £10,000 or more, out of a total of 468 for all providers. Overall, 99.7 per cent of those who received an adaptation and completed a customer satisfaction survey were satisfied or very satisfied with the work undertaken. This figure is based on approximately one in five of the total number of adaptations recorded. Four out of every five adaptations were undertaken in owner-occupied dwellings. For the research document, click here.
Rough sleeping: Cold Weather Fund grants
On 16 January 2020 Homeless Link announced that it has presented grants from the Government’s Cold Weather Fund to 51 frontline charities across the country, with the aim of supporting as many people sleeping rough off the streets as possible this winter. For details of the awards, click here.
Council home and £105,000 recovered after housing fraud conviction – Tower Hamlets
On 17 January 2020 London Borough of Tower Hamlets reported that a former Tower Hamlets resident, Khaleda Begum, had been sentenced in relation to two charges of housing fraud at Snaresbrook Crown Court. Ms Begum received a 16 months suspended prison sentence and 40 hours of unpaid work. She was also ordered to pay the council’s prosecution costs of £5,802 and a victim surcharge of £100. The fraud charges followed a successful investigation led by the council’s specialist housing fraud team that has helped to bring 426 social housing properties back into available use since 2013.
The first charge was that Ms Begum, who had been on the housing list since 2002, failed to disclose that on 17 February 2006, she had become the joint owner of a four-bedroom, two-bathroom property purchased for £337,500. The second charge was that on 14 March 2016, when applying to buy the social housing property that had been allocated to her in June 2006, she failed to disclose that the property was not her only or principal home. For a the council’s full report, click here.
Gypsy and Traveller encampments
On 21 January 2020 the Court of Appeal handed down judgment in London Borough of Bromley v Persons Unknown [2020] EWCA Civ 12. The Court dismissed Bromley’s appeal against the High Court’s decision to refuse the council’s application for an injunction against “persons unknown” stopping on public land in the borough. The Court of Appeal held that “borough wide injunctions are inherently problematic” and they “comprise a potential breach of both the [European] Convention [on Human Rights] and the Equality Act”. For the judgment, click here. For an analysis of the judgment on the Garden Court Chambers website, click here.
