Things will never be the same again. Councils and housing associations started the year operating in a familiar environment; 12 months later, they had a new inspector to answer to, new laws, a new job fighting antisocial behaviour, a new grant system, new bodies to dish out the money and a new code of conduct on the way – not to mention an entirely new image. Saba Salman reports on a sector in flux

Old dog, new role

With the Treasury sniffing around the sector, a new inspector to answer to and shake-ups in regulation, housing was well and truly under the microscope in 2003.

The year kicked off with bad news for councils – Derby was the only local authority to pass the government's new "fit for purpose" assessment of housing strategies.

Then in February a group of registered social landlords revealed plans to launch an independent quality mark scheme in the hope that those who won the mark would have scaled-down visits by the official inspectors.

Later the same month the government published a white paper on energy, saying it would review its Building Regulations. As well as obliging councils and housing associations to know how energy-efficient their homes are, the government said it would speed up Building Regulations and set tougher standards on energy efficiency.

It was launched too early for April Fool's Day but some housing insiders weren't sure whether to take the Housing Corporation's "traffic light" rating system seriously. The Corporation announced the scheme in March, saying it would grade RSLs' performance red, amber or green in a system similar to the Audit Commission's comprehensive performance assessment of local authorities. As this came just weeks before the corporation handed over its role as inspector of housing associations to the Audit Commission, some interpreted the move as a "last throw of the dice".

Many RSLs feared the new inspectors would be tougher than the old. Housing Today pictured the commission as a dastardly mutt snapping at the heels of harassed associations on a March cover, but new chief housing inspector Roy Irwin said: "There's a bit more to us than is implied by the caricature. There's watching out, and fault-finding, but a lot of our work is encouraging people to do more – and sometimes celebrating their achievements."

As if getting to grips with a seemingly tougher inspection regime wasn't shock enough, the Treasury had its beady eye on the sector, too. There was the Barker review of UK housing supply, the Miles study of the fixed-rate mortgage market and, in August, chancellor Gordon Brown's department began scrutinising RSL efficiency. It emerged that the government would study how well RSLs manage their assets as part of a wider, Treasury-led drive to squeeze better performance from the sector, sparking fears of a meagre handout in next summer's spending review.

So there was a delicious irony about the news in September that the sector's regulator was itself being shoved under the inspector's gaze. The government's "end-to-end" review of the Housing Corporation will look at how the corporation translates government policy into action and its findings will be implemented by April 2004.

Finally, following a governance debacle at Places for People (see "A bad year for …", page 24) it was announced in October that housing would get a new code of conduct from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The JRF's original remit had been to look across general public services, but this was expanded to include housing associations in the light of the boardroom row at England's largest RSL.

To pay or not to pay?

Governance was a hot topic in 2003, and there was no hotter potato than payment for board members. When the Housing Corporation re-examined the idea in 1999 as a way of recruiting more professional talent on to boards, it was met with outrage and disbelief – not to mention hurt feelings on the part of faithful board members. In 2003, the debate continued to rage – not least in the letters pages of Housing Today. The cheerleaders thought it was about time they got some remuneration for their efforts, while the naysayers said it went against the ethos of board membership, would exclude tenants on benefits, was too expensive and was far too complicated to introduce – and that it wouldn’t increase boards’ pulling power anyway. All that became academic in July, when the corporation said housing associations who could make a business case for it could pay members up to £15,000 – meaning a potential bill of £20m for the sector if all eligible associations sign up. By October, four of the UK’s 20 biggest registered social landlords – Anchor, Metropolitan, Northern Counties and Places for People – said they planned to go ahead and the Guinness Trust was testing out payment in one of its regions. Meanwhile it transpired that the William Sutton Trust, as a charity, had been paying its board members all along anyway.

Sick as a budgie

"No win, no fee" deals meant councils were sued more than ever before this year. But no one knew quite how rife compensation culture had become until we revealed one of the most spurious cases back in July: a tenant of a Western council whose flat had been repaired and repainted tried to sue his council when his budgie developed asthma. The case, unsurprisingly, was thrown out of court.

Clean-up Christie

In September, Olympic champion Linford Christie launched a campaign for design advisory body CABE Space to clean up derelict land. “This piece of land is the view from the grandstand at the Linford Christie Stadium in west London,” he said. “It could so easily be turned into a useful part of the stadium.”

A surprising verdict from James Strachan, audit commission chairman, on 10 october

"There is far too much regulation and nobody can say the UK has a better public service sector as a result"

Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson on the first anniversary of the homelessness act, 4 july

"Rough sleepers have disappeared; key workers are the new sexy face of homelessness and housing issues"

A year of behaving badly

Last year put antisocial behaviour on the map, but this year housing went from the police’s helping hand to its law-enforcing partner. March’s antisocial behaviour white paper put landlords centre stage in the crackdown, forcing more joined-up working between RSLs and councils that draw up crime and disorder reduction strategies, while April’s draft Housing Bill included plans to license private sector houses in multiple occupation and selected private landlords. David Blunkett told Housing Today in an exclusive interview in March: “If people see clear penalties and swift enforcement they’ll start to comply.” And by June a clutch of northern councils were at the forefront of the crackdown. It emerged that Manchester, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Leeds and Gateshead were unleashing teams to tackle nuisance by private tenants and owner-occupiers. But it was tougher for RSLs to get involved: a survey of the 230 members of the Social Landlords Crime and Nuisance Group in September found that a third were not on their local crime and disorder reduction partnerships. This didn’t dissuade the NHF from demanding that they take the lead in tackling antisocial behaviour. The Antisocial Behaviour Act was passed in November although the hotly contested issue of docking benefit from nuisance tenants was dropped after consultation with the housing sector.

Whose grant is it anyway?

2003 will be remembered as the year New Labour shattered the divide between public and private housebuilding by offering to give private developers grant formerly paid only to RSLs. The news, announced in April, sparked a furious debate that continues to rage. And with some of the sector’s biggest developing housing associations smarting over a perceived slur to their value for money, the news, in October, that the Housing Corporation will slash the number of RSLs funded to develop only rubbed salt into development directors’ wounds. There was more evidence of the private sector’s desire to get into social housing as property investor Asset Trust told the government in September that it would invest up to £1bn in 10,000 social homes in the next five years – a plan that would make it one of the sector’s top developers.

The chosen one

Norman Perry, the Housing Corporation chief executive, resigned in November and Housing Today asked the sector and a selection of personality experts what qualities his successor might need. The verdict: he or she will look good in blue, have untidy handwriting and be a good listener … perhaps a little like this chap?

A bad year for ...

Birmingham council
Last year’s “no” vote for transfer was just the start of the council’s woes. In January it decided to hand over its homes to community-based housing associations within four years, before admitting that eight out of 10 of its homes would fail the decency standard. September saw the secondment of housing director David Thompson to the Local Government Association while David Hucker and Michael Irvine were appointed to manage housing. The council admitted that it would miss seven out of 11 of its own housing performance targets and, later that month, the Audit Commission described its repairs and maintenance services as one of the “poorest performing”, not awarding it a single star. Places for People Group
A boardroom rift turned into the biggest governance issue of the year when five non-executive directors criticised the relationship between chairman Sebert Cox and group chief executive David Cowans. Two of the five rebels were voted off and two more resigned. In September chair Sebert Cox agreed to step down and the following month the RSL was put under Housing Corporation supervision. The debacle meant that England’s largest RSL failed to make it onto the corporation’s development partner list. Hull council
A dozen government-approved experts were parachuted into Hull in January to help solve serious failures revealed last year. In February it transpired that the council may have to demolish 2500 homes that underwent a £92m revamp just two years ago because of lack of demand. In June, chief executive Jim Brooks was suspended over his role in leaking a corporate government report, and by November the council was under Whitehall supervision.

A good year for ...

Bromford Housing Group
Bromford was ranked number five in the annual Sunday Times “Top 100 companies to work for” in March. London & Quadrant Housing Group was at number 67 and Pinnacle Housing was number 63. Walsall council
Went from the brink of bankruptcy and government intervention in January 2002 to praise from inspectors in August 2003, cutting its overspend to £1.7m along the way. Manchester council
Four-and-a-half years after it was conceived, housing’s private finance initiative was signed by Manchester council in April. Housing Today reporters
Mark Beveridge won PTC Young Journalist of the Year and Katie Puckett won the IBP Housing Journalist of the Year.

All change

Local elections on 1 May meant a round of musical chairs for 319 councils. A notable side-effect was that Ruth Bagnall replaced Paul Jenks as chair of the Local Government Association housing executive after Jenks lost his Southampton council seat. But more than policies and people change in this kind of upheaval: when the Conservatives took control of Barnet council from Labour in 2002, the portrait of Lenin in the leader’s office was replaced by one of the queen.

The home front

The war in Iraq had serious consequences for race relations in the UK. “We all need to be aware of things such as an increase in racist graffiti and race-related antisocial behaviour,” said Martin Cheeseman, director of housing at Brent council, in February. “We must track when these things start and where they are taking place, so that any increase can be dealt with.” Councils worked hard on initiatives that breached potential divides: Leicester, for instance, used £40,000 from the neighbourhood renewal fund and £145,000 from the ODPM’s community fund to develop projects including a forum for young people. “We have to work with young people to make sure that Islamophobia doesn’t develop,” said policy officer Paul Winstone. “It’s in the age groups of 15- to 17-year-olds where clashes are more likely to take place,” said Anil Singh, chief executive of Bradford-based Manningham Housing Association.

A man with a plan

It was just a twinkle in his eye when he promised a “step change” in housing after the July 2002 spending review but six months, 70 pages and a cast of thousands later, deputy prime minister John Prescott’s Communities Plan was finally born. “You can’t transform communities overnight, but I’m determined to make changes,” the proud father wrote exclusively in Housing Today. “We’ve put the foundations down for the long term. We have the vision, we have the funding and we have the determination.” Aside from the slight snag that no one could quite work out how much of the cash was new, thanks to the New Labour habit of re-announcing old money), the long-awaited blueprint for sustainable communities revealed how housing’s £22bn budget would be carved up over three years, including some of the biggest reforms to hit the sector in years. There was £600m to build 200,000 homes in four growth areas, £2bn for arm’s-length management organisations, £100m extra for the Challenge Fund and £500m confirmed for nine pathfinders. There were new organisations too, new regional housing boards to dish out the single regional investment pots that would replace the approved development programme and housing investment programme and a new task force on low-cost homeownership. But by the end of August, left-wing think tank the Institute for Public Policy and Research had drawn up a rival plan, saying the original failed to set housing proposals within a wider economic strategy.

Housing Today columnist and chair of Midlands Mediation Network, George Tzilivakis, on 7 february

"It is possible one of your colleagues voted BNP. Should you ignore them, talk to them or throw them from a moving car?"

Amnesty-hee

R&B star Ms Dynamite unveiled a sculpture of a knotted gun in the London Borough of Haringey to mark the end of the Metropolitan Police’s April firearms amnesty. More than 20,000 guns had been handed in.

Fun with funding

Housing’s financial rulebook was ripped up and re-bound this year. The scrapping of local authority social housing grant in April left dozens of housing projects high and dry; sparks also flew over the introduction of Supporting People – Bert Provan’s £1.4bn care services funding regime – which was a bureaucratic fiasco. But the biggest shake-up came in June when the Housing Corporation overturned its investment rules. Charged with ramping up housing supply under the beady eye of the Treasury, the corporation announced it would partner with larger developing RSLs, make total cost indicators more flexible and favour whole-life costs over initial outlay. It also unveiled standardised house designs such as the one illustrated above.

You say hello, i say goodbye

Former Camden council chief executive Steve Bundred became head of the Improvement and Development Agency in February but moved again in September to be chief executive of the Audit Commission … Bundred was replaced at the IDeA by Lucy de Groot, ex-director of public services at the Treasury … Aussie ex-property tycoon David Higgins was named chief executive of English Partnerships … Julia Thrift became director of the new public space watchdog, CABE Space … Communities Plan mastermind Mike Gahagan left the ODPM to chair the South Yorkshire market renewal pathfinder … Neil Macdonald replaced him at the ODPM … Terrie Alafat took up the reigns at the Homelessness Directorate … former accountant and Housing Corporation troubleshooter Peter Dixon took over the corporation hot seat from Baroness Brenda Dean … Max Steinberg departed the corporation after 25 years to chair the East Lancashire pathfinder, leaving former England rugby star John Carleton as new director of investment and regeneration in the North … project director Stephen Duckworth retired after 20 years at the NHF.

Recognise this?

No one could miss the National Housing Federation’s new image, launched in September at its annual conference in Birmingham to reflect associations’ wider role in their communities. Chief executive Jim Coulter attacked the many critics of the exercise for their “competitive and individualistic vision”. By the end of 2003, 100 registered social landlords had signed up to the cause and the blue and yellow tie pins had become de rigueur for the stylish housing person about town. But that wasn’t the only new look to make headlines as RSLs increasingly took on board the brand-conscious thinking of the private sector: among the others were Anglia Housing Group’s new set of logos in February and charity Centrepoint’s £30,000 brand relaunch in October.

Women make progress

Women still occupy only a fraction of the sector’s top jobs, but 2003 was a year of progress. High-profile appointments included Yvette Cooper (below) taking the reins as junior housing minister at the ODPM and Hazel Blears becoming Home Office crime minister in June’s reshuffle. In March, outgoing Housing Corporation chair Baroness Brenda Dean called for more diversity in the top jobs and eight months later the corporation followed through with an action plan to ensure that by the end of the decade, half the top 200 RSLs have female chief executives. Housing Today celebrated the achievements of 40 of the most important women in housing in November when we got them together for a photoshoot and networking session.

And finally ...

Whodunnit?
Intrigue, deception, missing memos: the sector had its very own mystery in February thanks to someone at the Housing Corporation leaking details of a multimillion-pound IT outsourcing contract. A private detective was hired to sift through records and paperwork to find the source – what fun that must have been – but the mole was never publicly identified. Boxing not so clever
“If David Blaine does manage to survive, we will not be suddenly turning it into a Starter Home Initiative idea,” quipped London mayor Ken Livingstone at the launch of Shelter’s London Housing Aid services. Meanwhile, Shelter director Adam Sampson wondered whether Yank-in-a-box Blaine’s sojourn above Tower Bridge glamorised homelessness.

Source

Housing Today