Questions

Will the government be ready to address the licensing of HMOs in the next parliamentary session?

NR: There is very heavy competition for legislation in the coming session and we still have a lot of work to do in carrying forward the HMO licensing proposals.

What about leasehold reform? I can’t anticipate future legislation, but you will see there's a smile on my face.

Is rebranding social housing necessary? It’s vital. It's essential that we get away from the conventional image which has done so much harm in the past - that of treating social housing as second best. We have to ensure that in future we break with the tradition of having segregated areas of housing - some exclusively for owner occupiers and some exclusively for tenants - we have to achieve balance communities where people can live side by side. Through the planning process we are promoting that very actively indeed to ensure that in new developments where ever possible there is a mixed pattern of tenure. I don’t expect the world to change over night, but I’m spelling out our commitment to that future and we will drive it very hard.

Are you looking to rename ‘social housing’? I have never really liked the term social housing but no one has really come up with an alternative generic term.

Is someone in the department working on a new name? We are actually looking at the policies. I do think the image will change without the need for a change of name. You have got to change the quality of the product and improve the way it is managed.

How will you raise design standards? We have put up for too long with second rate poor quality design and shoddily built buildings particularly in the social housing sector and that’s not good enough. A lot of the worst housing that was built in the past was because no one bothered to talk to the people who lived in it.

Should more, or all, tenants pay something towards their rents? This is one of the things that we are are going to look at in the context of the Green Paper. There are obviously strong arguments that if people have a direct interest in the rent they pay they will themselves be able to have more informed choices about where they live. That links into something I feel very passionately about. The system depends too much on the allocation of homes to people who have no say in the process and end up essentially as supplicants going to a RSL or local authority and being utterly dependent on the decision about where they will be housed. We do need to give people more choice - that’s one of the themes we will be pressing pretty hard. Now if the full cost of housing, is met by housing benefit it’s quite difficult for some one to take an informed choice other than saying we will go for the best possible most expensive place. There is a perverse incentive in the existing housing benefit scheme which needs to be looked at. I find it totally anathema when I hear about people being told they have to go into this accommodation - there’s no choice, there’s no alternative. That’s a characteristic of a Stalinist regime rather than a regime that is seeking to enhance people’s freedom and life style.

How can councils in the south east offer more choice when there is a shortage of social housing? I accept there is a shortage in some areas but the existence of shortage should not mean that you deny people more choice. We ought to be seeing very much more choice in areas of the county where there is not a shortage, where there are problems of unpopular housing, where it is still the case that people are not being offered choice to take accommodation that is perhaps not being used. What I don’t want is for people to think they can stay in the old fashioned way of the Town Hall deciding who is allocated housing and the tenants being expected to be grateful for being given what's offered to them. That is not a healthy framework, and it’s one that has to change.

You could allow councils to build more homes. We are very keen to explore ways for housing stock to be enhanced or new homes to be completed either through planning arrangements or through partnership deals or through the use of the PFI and new financial models.

Councils want to be able to borrow in the same ways as RSLs. But they are not RSLs they are public authorities bound by current constraints. If an RSL takes a bad decision on borrowing ultimately they will go to the wall. Treating councils on a par is not realistic.

Are you happy to see an acceleration of the transfer of council homes? I support transfer where it is going to bring demonstrable benefits to the tenants, tenants should decide. But transfer is not a vehicle for simply eliminating council housing it’s a vehicle for increased investment and effective focused action to tackle problems and priorities that might not otherwise be improved.

Do you expect the number of transfer to continue to grow? I would like to see a transfer programme continuing on a healthy basis and the level we are seeing this year is a good healthy level at about 140,000.

Do you want to continue to promote local housing companies? I’m very keen to promote LHCS there are already some models but there’s considerable scope for taking that forward. It is all dependent on people coming forward with sensible innovative approaches. I don’t want to set up a blue print. I want people to continue to look in an innovative way at what can be achieved by different models of management and ownership. This is let-a-hundred-flowers-bloom time rather than you will all do it my way.