News

Social Housing Policy Working Group announce up and coming papers

In August the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government published its Social Housing Green Paper, and set out a 12-week consultation, ending on 6 November. To help inform responses to the consultation, the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE) will be publishing six papers from the Social Housing Policy Working Group before the end of October. Each will offer a comprehensive review of the evidence on a different aspect of social housing. These papers are the culmination of 12 months work by CaCHE researchers and the Social Housing Policy Working Group.

Tomorrow, we publish the first paper entitled, ‘Promoting design value in public rented housing, an English perspective’, by Professor Flora Samuel. This paper is timely, given the recent lifting of the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) cap which should boost council housebuilding. Having set out the historical context of public rented housing in England, the paper offers serveral recommendations to local authorities who are thinking about expanding their public rented offer.

The lifting of the HRA cap has also renewed focus on how the development of social housing can be funded and financed. In the up and coming paper, ‘Funding new social and affordable housing: ideas, evidence and options’, Professor Ken Gibb reviews existing and potential models for funding social housing.

Housing is a devolved matter, and different nation states have pursued different social housing policies. As Joe Frey notes in his paper ‘Social housing in Northern Ireland’, there has been no Large Scale Voluntary Transfer in Northern Ireland meaning that 70% of dwellings in the social sector are still owned and managed by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE). Professor Keith Kintrea and Dr Bilge Serin note in their paper ‘Social housing in Scotland’, that the Scottish government have attempted to strengthen the role of social housing through a range of policies including the commitment to an enhanced social housebuilding programme. In ‘Social housing in Wales’, Dr Bob Smith similarly looks at the social housing sector in Wales in terms of its scale, quality, organisation, governance, costs and contribution. Each of these ‘Nation State papers’ aims to learn from the various ‘policy-experiments’ that devolution has allowed.

The sixth paper by Professor Alex Marsh focusses on what is perhaps the most prominent issue raised in the Social Housing Green Paper: ‘Governance and accountability’. He reviews a range of issues including: organisational strategy and scale; governance structures and values; the voice of tenants; organisational performance; and thinking systemically.

The work of the Social Housing Policy Working Group does not end here. We aim to inform social housing policy and practice beyond the 6 November deadline. In the coming months, we will be publishing further papers including ‘Housing subsidies and affordability’, by Professor Geoff Meen; ‘Land and planning issues in the delivering of social housing’, by Tom Kenny and Dr Tom Moore; and ‘Social housing models’, by Professor David Clapham.

All Social Housing Policy Group papers will be published on the CaCHE publication page. 

If you would like to learn more about the Social Housing Policy Working Group, please contact Dr Chris Foye or Dr Gareth Young. 

 

Date: October 10, 2018 12:23 pm

Author(s):

Categorised in: ,