Decision details

To submit the council’s response to the government’s Social Housing Green Paper, which is a consultation paper outlining proposals for a new deal for social housing.

The government is seeking views on its Social Housing Green Paper entitled, ‘A new deal for social housing.’ This green paper focuses on 4 key themes, as follows:

 

• Ensuring homes are decent and safe
• Effective resolution of complaints
• Empowering residents and strengthening the Regulator
• Tackling stigma and celebrating thriving communities

 

Our attached consultation response offers feedback to the government on each of these themes.

 

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SOCIAL HOUSING GREEN PAPER CONSULTATION RESPONSE FROM CHELTENHAM

 

Following a positive collaborative workshop, this response is a reflection of the views of Cheltenham Borough Council (CBC), Cheltenham Borough Homes (CBH) and the CBH Tenant Scrutiny Improvement Panel (TSIP) which has direct governance links with the CBH Board.

 

Responses will be under each of the five key themes, rather than as “answers to the questions”.

 

1.  Ensuring Homes are Safe and Decent

 

 

 

We believe that, as with other “themes” the fundamental issue is about relationships and collaboration.  Developing the ability for tenants to feel able to easily contact landlords is the first step in problem solving and relationship building.  Landlords must provide ease of access, clear and simple messaging, relevant information and appropriate responses and behaviours.  The culture of customer engagement is crucial.  Understanding the mechanisms tenants and leaseholders want to use to contact and receive information from their landlord is critical, rather than the landlord developing its preferred route and expecting residents to “fit in”.

 

With regard to safety measures, these should equally apply in the private rented sector so as to provide an expected standard across sector.

 

The definition of “decency” of homes should include improved energy efficiency across sector, also to include elements relating to communal and neighbourhood improvements.  Improvement in standards will require careful financial consideration and planning, linked to other policy changes such as Right to Buy and the abolition of the HRA debt cap.  Landlords will seek to increase investment but this must be taken within the context of resource capacity and multiple other challenges, such as regeneration and new supply.  Cheltenham welcomes the opportunity to look at how the many recent and potential future changes in financial agreements can be brought together including standards to improve existing homes and communities as well as the development of new.

2.  Effective Resolution of Complaints

 

 

 

 

Cheltenham fully supports the aim for residents to have a stronger voice to influence decisions and challenge their landlord.  CBH would be very keen to be part of any potential future best practice research project/pilot.  Within Gloucestershire, the Gloucestershire Homes and Communities Partnership (which CBH are part of and also includes partner housing associations) are currently conducting a shared project to monitor existing practice and consider a shared approach across landlords with the view to establishing best practice, as a county and partnership.

 

We recommend the removal of the democratic filter stage and suggest careful consideration is given to any future proposals to ensure appropriate support and representation mechanisms which residents support.

 

Access to appropriate and clear information is critical and forms a further element of the culture of relationship building between resident and landlord.  Awareness training must be provided by landlords so that colleagues across their business are in tune not only with the expectation but also equipped with the personal skills required to effectively listen, hear and respond.  Many residents will find the complaints process incredibly traumatic – this should not be intensified.

 

Best practice guidance should be developed to ensure that landlords clearly understand the standards expected of them.  Good complaints handling should reduce the need for any specific response arrangement around health and safety issues.  Clear response targets should be easy to access and allow understanding.

 

Feedback through the Social Housing Green Paper suggests that the Ombudsman is regarded as fair but under-resourced, which can result in delay and frustration. An increase in resources for the Ombudsman would be helpful.

3.  Empowering Residents and Strengthening the Regulator

 

 

 

 

The starting point should be to understand which service comparisons are of value to residents.  Each landlord will be different in their offer, location, size and aspirations.  The resident perspective must be involved to avoid a series of metrics which residents have not selected as important to them.

 

Once a relevant suite of indicators is approved, landlords should be transparent and report against them in a way which is clear and understandable.

 

A customer focussed culture will ensure involvement, engagement and influence.  This will involve a range of mechanisms to provide service scrutiny, shaping and development.  Having resident Board members sends a clear message of significance but cannot be seen as the answer to all – many residents simply do not want to be a Board member and would prefer to influence in different ways.  Therefore, a menu of opportunities should be available.

 

The experience residents have of their landlord should be taken account of, including eliminating funding for new homes development when landlords cannot evidence good existing management.  Landlords should be able to show a clear commitment to ongoing improvement of customer services.

 

A review of the consumer standards should be carried out to be reflective of current expectation.

 

The Regulator should have greater ability and power to proactively regulate the consumer standards.  All social housing residents should be regulated against the consumer standard.

 

4.  Tackling Stigma and Celebrating Thriving Communities

 

 

We believe this to be a really important issue, with residents feeling stigmatised by the media but not necessarily by themselves.  Many residents are proud of their lives but this is not the media message from some quarters.  The ‘See the Person’ campaign has raised the profile of stigma but now needs to increase the value of its message and campaigning.

The acute shortage of social housing in many areas makes it inaccessible to all but the poorest households, leading to concentrations of poverty and negative stereotyping. Building attractive, good quality social housing for people would make an important contribution to addressing issues around stigma, opening social housing to a more diverse and less marginalised group of tenants.

We welcome the inclusion of planning issues and good design in the discussion around tackling stigma in social housing. It is particularly important that all new housing meets the longer term needs and aspirations of communities. Focusing on good design and revisiting issues of housing quality, space and safety are all timely. It is particularly important to build these wider considerations into the evaluation of value for money and scheme viability.

Many residents feel they live in strong communities and do not see the opportunity for home ownership or indeed recognise that aspiration.  The assumption of this aspiration can in itself be stigmatising and generalistic.  Landlords should aspire to assisting and enabling the development of resilient communities while recognising the challenges those communities and individuals face on a daily basis.  Knowing our residents and their needs is key to providing assistance, when required either as a landlord or as a place-shaper in collaboration with voluntary and statutory partners.

Landlords need, as part of their core business, to recognise the value residents provide to their communities and celebrate positive stories.  CBH have for the last 10 years held an Annual Tenants and Leaseholders Awards night which is an opportunity to recognise those positive contributions in a number of categories with individuals and groups nominated by residents for their incredible contributions.

Having a culture of resident engagement and influence assists the landlord to deal with people, not just process.  CBH has recently conducted visits for 80% of residents to greater understand their needs and opinions.  Knowing the people is critical to providing services to individuals and communities.

5.  Expanding Supply and Supporting Home Ownership

 

 

The lifting of the caps on HRA borrowing is a really positive and welcome decision which will give additional opportunities for new supply to local authorities.

The RTB consultation offers a further opportunity to alter the landscape to enable additional supply.

Cheltenham Borough Council have recently made a unanimous decision to provide CBH, it’s ALMO with access to a loan facility of £100m over ten years.  This will allow the development of a ‘spectrum’ of housing and represents a collaborative approach to addressing local need.

Alongside the lifting of the HRA debt cap and potential changes to RTB this decisive initiative provides a platform for change and opportunity.

Grant funding from Government for both new supply and regeneration would provide additional options both to invest in existing communities and enable the development of exciting and cohesive new communities.

In Cheltenham this is typified by the ambition of CBC and CBH to find ways to deliver on the Master Plan for the regeneration of West Cheltenham recently submitted to Government alongside exciting and innovative opportunities for the Cyber Park initiative.  Together, these initiatives could offer a connection between new and existing communities.

Cheltenham has clear aspirations for a step change in housing provision which will make long lasting change for our communities as well as address the aspirations of the CBC Place Strategy and contribute to economic factors in a positive and significant way.

The ‘spectrum’ will enable activity in the Private Rented sector as well as build on shared ownership opportunities which have already been provided by the CBC/CBH partnership. 

New initiatives of ownership should be explored which enable tenants to increase their ‘stake’ in the ownership of their home, such as ‘Rent to Own’.

Further consideration should be given to ‘empty homes’ which have deliberately been purchased as an investment opportunity.

We are keen to explore modern methods of construction and modular build as part of our future development plans.

Ultimately, the challenge is to provide places where people want to live, work and play.

 

 

 

 

 

This response has been prepared jointly between the council and Cheltenham Borough Homes, and was informed by members of Cheltenham Borough Homes’ Tenant Scrutiny Improvement Panel. This Panel is made up of council tenants, whose role is to:

 

·         Scrutinise and challenge the work of CBH so that the views and priorities of residents are heard and used to improve and enhance CBH service delivery,

·         Ensure that residents are involved in influencing CBH’s strategic direction in service delivery, reflecting the needs and aspirations of its customers, and

·         Provide greater emphasis on 'value for money' in the delivery of services.