Quality | 2010.01.24
Labour misses housing repairs target
Pledge to eliminate all poor quality social housing by this year will not be met, says spending watchdog
More than 300,000 households are still living in draughty, leaky and unmodernised social housing, despite a Labour programme which promised to eliminate all poor quality housing by 2010, according to the government\'s spending watchdog.
The "decent homes" programme promised to eliminate substandard social housing and enacted the removal of the management of council houses from local authorities to private bodies. But the National Audit Office says today that the target will take another eight years to meet, and that completion of the refurbishment programme is threatened by the uncertain future of public spending.
In 2001 there were 1.6m poor quality homes in the social housing stock, 39% of the total. By the end of last year that had shrunk to 14%, with the government estimating that only 8% will remain unfit by the end of this year. But there are still 305,000 households below the standards that stipulate they should be "warm, weatherproof and have reasonably modern facilities". Kitchens must be no more than 20 years old and bathrooms no more than 30 years old.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: "There are risks to both the programme\'s completion and what has been achieved so far if a reliable funding mechanism is not put in place … Hundreds of thousands of families are still living in properties which are not warm, weathertight, or in a reasonable state of repair."
The programme\'s cost is likely to hit £37bn in the next year, compared with the initial budget of £19bn in 1997. Delays have hit authorities that refused to opt out of managing their own council houses by creating private bodies to run them or using housing associations. Those authorities were prevented from borrowing money privately to fund repairs.
Some local authorities chose to set higher standards for their decent home provision, renegotiating the timescale to allow them to pay the greater costs. But their funding is now dependent on the next spending round, which could be hit by the tough public spending climate. Housing, unlike education, health, development and the police, has not been safeguarded against looming cuts.
Phyllis Starkey, Labour chair of the Commons communities committee, said: "Good quality housing is crucial for all objectives – healthy families, educational attainment and general levels of crime and antisocial behaviour. It must be protected."
The Department of Communities and Local Government said yesterday: "We will respond in full to the public accounts committee report in due course. As [housing minister] John Healey confirmed to parliament in December, he remains totally committed to completing the decent homes programme and making sure it is fully funded."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/j[...]-misses-housing-repairs-target
