From where I’m sitting …

Private eye: Peter Taylor

The Decent Homes standard is a minimum standard for homes. It is not a standard for decent estates, decent communities or decent environments. Residents of a troubled estate gain little more from refurbishment than the ability to look out on the same problems from more comfortable homes. Most social housing properties, however, are not in sink estates, in crisis or severely deprived. Many properties may be dilapidated, but nonetheless are in communities that, given support, can achieve sustainability.

The Trellick Tower in Kensington, London, famously demonstrated that the tallest tower blocks can provide sought-after homes, and the centre of Edmonton Green provides a more recent example of residents choosing to continue living in tower blocks.

For those who remain in older homes, the Decent Homes standard offers real improvement. Their homes are warmer, less draughty, less damp, cleaner, safer and more comfortable. Their homes should be much cheaper to live in. The services they rely on, such as communal lifts, will be more reliable.

While Decent Homes and other refurbishment programmes are designed to improve individual properties, they can contribute to the holistic well-being of an estate and its community when supported by wider activity as part of a programme. For example, the refurbishment or regeneration will often incorporate the provision of new community facilities or the improvement of existing ones. This is becoming commonplace when a project is part of a new build Section 106 agreement or other programme involving the private sector.

Community improvements can involve providing a training facility for residents to learn IT skills and improve their employment prospects. Or it may include developing a play area helping to encourage young people to take part in sporting activity and adopt a health lifestyle early on in life.

Estate improvements can boost an area’s economy

Estate improvements can also act as a catalyst to boost the long-term economy of the area by providing employment and training opportunities for local people. The scale of work required by the Decent Homes standard, coupled with the UK’s skills shortages, means that the estates are a natural recruiting ground. Training and employment initiatives are now commonplace on estate improvement programmes. John Laing Training’s Supported Training and Employment Programme, for example, provides training and work for long-term unemployed young people on estates.

So refurbishment can provide people in the community with a short-term job while the work is taking place and equip them with highly-demanded skills, improved chances of a job and self-respect.

By Peter Taylor, managing director, John Laing Partnership

Public eye: Peter Quinn

In the rush to hit the 2010 deadline for the Decent Homes standard, the big picture issues, such as ensuring estates become sustainable and making the best use of your assets, can easily get lost.

Sustainability can mean many different things, but its core meaning is surely creating an area where people desire to live. What makes people stay in an area varies: it could be a good school, that they feel safe or that there is a sense of community. One thing that certainly does contribute to sustainability is a mixed community, but such communities take time to put in place. Prime Focus is building 170 homes on the Leyhill estate in Birmingham. By the time our private sector partner Bellway Homes finishes its part of the scheme, the regeneration of the estate will have been in progress for seven years. The project involved the demolition of more than 700 homes. The regenerated Leyhill will be much more sustainable in the long run than if the original estate had been renovated to meet Decent Homes. Yet, unless an estate regeneration scheme is ready to start now, it has little chance of hitting the 2010 deadline.

We must not spend money on homes that are not sustainable

The other danger of a one-dimensional approach to decency is that a long-term view of investment is not taken. If we invest in stock which does not meet the needs of future generations, the longer-term cost is greater as future investment will still be needed.

But we are now at a stage where some estates have not been improved and time is running out. Rather than rush into spending money on homes that are not sustainable in the long term, there is still the opportunity to consider options. One is to encourage landlords to consider best practice estates where public and private partners are delivering mixed communities that are sustainable in the long term. We then need to urge the release of land at below market levels on these estates to encourage partners to invest, and when investment takes place it should be in the environment as a whole and not just in the fabric of the buildings. Only when this happens will we achieve our twin goals of improving our stock and creating estates that are sustainable.

For far too long lack of investment in housing stock meant tenants lived in deteriorating conditions. The government did social housing a great service by forcing local authorities and housing associations to focus attention on their stock. It has left the sector’s stock in a far better state than it was when it came to power. But this legacy could be undermined if we produce estates that are not multi-tenure and fail to create an environment that is sustainable for the future.

By Peter Quinn, executive director for new business at housing association Prime Focus