Housing Tenants Launch Campaign On ‘Decent Homes’ Promises » Housing » 24dash.com

Number 10 E-petition heads campaign to restore funding for social housing

Thousands of social housing tenants from across England have been urged to sign an online petition posted on the 10 Downing Street website calling for ministers to honour their financial pledges to bring 150,000 properties up to the Government’s Decent Homes standard.

The online petition is the first stage of a wider initiative involving the NFA with the aim of changing government policy.
It follows the July announcement by Housing Minister, John Healey, that the Government would transfer £150m from the 2009-11 Decent Homes programme, depriving any ALMO not yet rated Two Stars, the guarantee of Decent Homes funding for planned individual decent homes projects.

The decision will directly affect up to 300,000 ALMO tenants as well as many more individuals and businesses in the wider community.

The Number 10 petition is calling for “the Prime Minister to ensure that all Arms Length Management Organisations who qualify immediately receive all the Decent Homes programme funding promised them.”

The campaign is backed by the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA) whose 69 member organisations manage over 1 million council homes. The NFA works closely with tenants from the 12 ALMOs affected, advising on how best to make their case to ministers and has commissioned a research document exploring the benefits of Decent Homes.

It shows how living in a Decent Home-standard property - warm, dry, weatherproof, in a reasonable state of repair and with reasonably modern facilities - does not merely boost health and wellbeing, but also improve tenants’ lives via home security/crime reduction, community cohesion, educational attainment, lifelong achievement, jobs and apprenticeships.
The study includes testimony from tenants about how the state of currently unimproved homes damages their lives; the financial costs and job losses at contractors whose order books have been hit; and the potential penalties for ALMOs who have had to cancel building contracts.

The decision to withdraw funding from the 12 ALMOs has had an immediate effect on both tenants and contractors – just as the building industry and employment have been hit hard by the recession – as well as the organisations themselves, many of which were formed specifically to unlock Decent Homes funding.

NFA Chair, Alison Inman, reported huge disappointment among the tenants in ALMO-managed properties who will not now enjoy the improvements to their homes they were promised. She said:

“The upgrades are vital for people who are often society’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable. The planned home improvements are not merely a matter of comfort, but are essential to the health and wellbeing of tenants. This is why people feel so let down and why there is such great impetus for what will be a wide-ranging campaign.”

Before the Decent Homes programme’s introduction, 2.1m homes did not reach a decent standard. Now as a result of Government funding, 82 per cent of housing is ‘Decent’, 250,000 of which is managed by ALMOs.

Funding has been delayed to support a new house building initiative. Alison Inman stressed that the NFA supports this programme, but that it makes no sense to fund it at the expense of improvements to existing stock. She added:

“There is a desperate need in this country for new affordable social housing – and indeed many of our members want the right to build new homes - but we believe the Government is making a serious error of judgement.

“Given there will shortly be five million people on council waiting lists, it is essential that we continue to maintain and improve existing stock, because new build alone will never satisfy demand. Certainly financing it partly by reducing money allocated to the Decent Homes programme is not the right solution.”

To sign the petition, visit http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/DecentHomes/