GLA asks landlords to try ‘social engineering’ on new estates

Social housing providers in London are being urged to consider “social engineering” on new housing developments to stop them becoming sink estates.

The Greater London Authority and the Housing Corporation this week called on the capital’s councils and housing associations to stipulate that a percentage of lettings – perhaps as much as 15% – be made to people with jobs.

Speaking at the London Housing Federation’s development conference on Tuesday, Neale Coleman, policy adviser to the London mayor, said: “I don’t like to refer to this as social engineering, but there is an important issue around the way we are developing new estates and prioritising only people from homelessness lists.

“We are setting up developments to fail. [The GLA] would like to see some aspect of new lettings to all schemes being economically active households. How much would have to be worked out but it could be about 10-15%.

“If it is applied in a sensible way, it would work. I don’t think this needs to be done to the exclusion of homelessness provision,” he said.

Coleman added that “early discussions” had taken place with local authorities – who have a statutory duty to house the homeless – about to how such a requirement might work.

He said it needed to be implemented “sooner rather than later” but admitted it was unlikely that anything would be included in the draft London housing strategy for 2005.

At present, councils and associations in London use the “partners in housing need” protocol to allocate new lettings.

In a speech to a separate conference on Monday, Steve Douglas, London field director for the corporation, called for this arrangement to be scrapped.

“It focuses on only one aspect of the problem – homelessness. It is outdated and, when applied to new schemes, is more likely to create welfare ghettos than sustainable communities. We need to ensure we do not have areas that get thought of as sink estates.”

Martin Cheeseman, head of housing at Brent council, said: “What we really need to do is press the government to change the funding rules around housing benefit so that it is easier for people to move from benefits into work.”