Since we first became familiar with the term ‘Levelling Up’, debate has centred on how the Government’s flagship agenda would strike the balance between innovation and infrastructure, and the desire to shift attention to our smaller towns and rekindle community identity. So it was, with the publication of the Levelling Up White Paper, that the Government set out 12 defining missions focused on, yes, productivity and ‘globally competitive cities’, but also on improving local agency and restoring pride and belonging. What Andy Haldane, the White Paper’s central architect, described as Levelling Up’s core function to address both ‘low-growth’ and ‘low life satisfaction’.

Terms like ‘pride’ and ‘life satisfaction’ don’t necessarily fit well with the White Paper’s emphasis on data, monitoring, and evaluation. As much has already been admitted, Will Garton, the Director General for Levelling Up at DHLUC, described the missions covering wellbeing and pride as ‘deliberately exploratory’, and not the kind of metrics that can measured in the same way as broadband rollout. The Government is in listening mode to get this right.

Many are answering this call, the Levelling Up agenda has also developed a new network of academics and policy makers focussing on areas perceived as ‘left behind’ and grappling with issues like civic identity and an areas’ ambitions.

Last year UCL published their report Sacriston: towards a deeper understanding of place, an exploration of the perceived and actual needs and aspirations of those that make up the North East ex-mining village. The Universities of Southampton and Sheffield have directly looked to address Levelling Up’s pride problem with their project Feeling Towns: the role of place and identity in governance and local policy, an attempt to gain a greater understanding of civic pride and place attachment and the roles they play in regeneration strategies. Finally, We’re Right Here, a campaign supported by organisations including Power to Change, New Local, and the JRF, takes inspiration from the Mutual Aid support groups that sprung up during the Covid Pandemic to call for a Community Power Act based on good practice from neighbourhoods across the country working toward success on their own terms.

There is also an important role to play here for Northern Housing Consortium members. After all, it is within the mission to restore a sense of community that we find targets around improving home ownership and improving housing quality. As we’ll be underlining at our 14^th July Levelling Up Conference, housing providers have a central role to play in working collaboratively across areas and sectors to support thriving neighbourhoods, including empowering and working with communities directly. Whilst focussing on Net Zero, the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury also showed the enthusiasm tenants have for their areas and how, given the chance, active stewardship of neighbourhoods could also be a shared stewardship between tenant, landlord, and other anchor institutions; harnessing new green industries to Level Up areas into more environmentally sustainable, happier, healthier places. This work also plays into the Social Housing White Paper agenda concerning access to, and quality of, green spaces.

In the coming months the NHC will be thinking more about how innovative engagement methodologies can be used to bring our communities into the heart of the discussion on what improving pride and belonging means for Levelling Up success: How can we better understand our resident’s perspective on pride in place at a neighbourhood level? What factors affect the pride they feel? And what influence do NHC members, as builders and custodians of neighbourhoods, have over improving this sense of belonging?

We’d love to carry on the conversation with you and hear about any plans you have in place or ambitions you hold for future work connected to this agenda. Over the course of the next year, we hope to work with a small number of NHC members to identify innovative methodologies that will allow us to truly listen to residents and understand what housing organisations can do at neighbourhood level to develop pride in place.

If you’d be interested in exploring this with us, or have learning you’d like to share, please contact Brian Robson at the NHC : brian.robson@northern-consortium.org.uk

Together we hope NHC members can develop a community of learning that can both centre the needs and ambitions of northern communities and ensure housing’s vital contribution to the Levelling Up is recognised and valued.

Today’s speech was delivered during a tough week for the Prime Minister, following the vote of no confidence in his leadership on Monday which he won by a smaller margin than he was anticipating. Political commentators now see Boris Johnson on a mission of political revival ahead of the two by-elections this month (Wakefield and Tiverton), including the delivery of today’s housing policy speech at Blackpool and the Fylde College. On housing, his speech focused on expanding home ownership for those living in housing association homes and for those on low incomes. Here’s what Johnson announced:

 

Extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants

The expansion of Right to Buy to housing associations was heavily trailed in the run-up to today’s speech where Johnson confirmed Government intend to go ahead with the policy. It is expected that discounts of up to 70% will be available to those living in housing association homes.

Johnson said he wants to give greater freedoms to housing association tenants to buy their homes and said Government are planning to work with the sector over the coming months to bring the new scheme forward “within existing spending plans”.

Extending Right to Buy (RTB) to housing association tenants is not a new Conservative Party policy, it was first suggested by David Cameron and then Theresa May but it has been continuously dropped. Now Boris Johnson is dusting it off once again.

In an interview this morning, Michael Gove confirmed that the scheme would be capped initially and grown over time, stating each home sold will be replaced “like for like, one for one”, which was echoed in Johnson’s speech this afternoon. Under May’s Government, a voluntary scheme in the West Midlands was piloted to test the policy’s feasibility, it showed that replacement homes would likely include more shared ownership properties with fewer for rent. This is a huge risk to the already low level of socially rented homes across the country, especially with the knowledge that only around 5% of the homes sold under RTB so far have been replaced, despite government commitments.

Across the North, there are supply concerns due to expected low value sales receipts in many areas not being able to cover the costs of delivering new replacement social homes. The Northern Housing Monitor shows the shortfall of social homes when comparing average annual affordable home completions in recent years against identified need is -81.3%, the largest shortfall in provision across affordable home types in the region:

Michael Gove has recently said that we need to be building more social homes and bringing a new RTB policy forward now puts this ambition at risk, signalling there may be a degree of disconnect between DLUHC and Number 10. Though the detail has not yet been revealed, the West Midlands pilot estimated a national roll-out of the policy would cost Treasury around £15bn over a decade to cover the discounts – a high figure that could be used elsewhere to achieve the Government’s existing housing commitments, such as the levelling up mission to improve housing quality and achieving net zero targets by bringing social homes up to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band C (the energy efficiency benchmark) by 2030.

There are also concerns around housing quality: historically, RTB has led to the sale of the most attractive social homes in higher demand areas, with those who cannot afford to buy a property left with reduced choices. Over the long-term, depleted social housing stock could see further demand shifted to the private rented sector and rising numbers of homelessness.

The NHC’s housing association members are already facing enormous pressure to deliver on important but competing agendas: increasing the supply of good quality, sustainable, affordable homes; retrofitting existing homes to reduce carbon emissions and reduce household energy bills; and delivering on building safety. Though Michael Gove has confirmed this new policy will not affect the Affordable Homes Programme, there are concerns around how housing associations’ resources will be impacted by it.

We await further details to be published by Government about how this could be taken forward in practice.

 

Mortgages for housing benefit recipients

Another key announcement was also about expanding home ownership, coining a new slogan ‘Benefits to Bricks’. This would see those receiving housing benefit able to use that income to apply for a mortgage, switching the stream of housing benefit from rent to mortgages.

Johnson made reference to the level of housing support (£30bn) currently “being swallowed” by private landlords and housing associations through rents and the potential to change rules on welfare so “working people” can start to put housing benefit towards a mortgage.

There are questions here about how this would work in practice, especially around households’ ability to save for a deposit with the capital limit for means-tested benefits being £16,000 and any savings above £6,000 being treated as income, therefore reducing the level of income received.

With the surging cost-of-living, it’s also difficult to see how the Government can envision people at scale being able to save a deposit to buy a home, even in areas with lower value properties. There are further affordability concerns about how low-income households will be able to maintain their homes in the long-term and the impact of this on levels of poverty and quality of life in the owner-occupied sector.

As with the Right to Buy announcement, the demand for these changes is uncertain, therefore the scale may be limited when they are introduced.

Boris Johnson also announced there will be a comprehensive review of mortgage products on the market to “unbolt the door” of home ownership by looking at how people (especially young people who are in the “ludicrous situation” of being able to prove they can pay high rents but cannot get a mortgage) can access low-deposit mortgages. The review will report back in the Autumn.

 

Other announcements

Additional announcements today included plans to “supercharge” leaseholders’ ability to buy their own freehold. There was also a reference to plans to use more publicly-owned brownfield land to ramp up housebuilding – the NHC supports plans for brownfield renewal in the North, with the Northern Housing Monitor identifying the North’s brownfield capacity as having the potential to generate over 300,000 homes across 5,000 sites.

The speech also covered pressures on households due to the rising costs of food, energy, childcare and transport. Johnson highlighted the £37bn package of support provided so far to help with the cost of living (both targeted and universal). On the gas crisis that is driving up energy bills, Johnson referenced their track record on developing off-shore wind and their plans to expand nuclear power as alternatives to gas. The NHC will continue to make the case on behalf of our members that a key solution to the cost-of-living crisis, the gas crisis, and the climate crisis is to insulate homes at scale and transition them to clean heat in the medium- and long-term.

Please do not hesitate to follow up on this with the NHC by contacting Anna Seddon (Policy and Public Affairs Manager) at anna.seddon@northern-consortium.org.uk.

We’ve launched our ambitious, new corporate plan – it sets out how we’ll support you over the next three years to help you create better homes and places.

This new plan focusses on your unrivalled member experience, it outlines our influencing priorities for the next few years: meeting the net zero challenge and housing at the heart of a rebalanced country, and it highlights our plans to provide the best services to support you now and into the future.

One of the objectives within our corporate plan states ‘we’ll work with NHC members to ensure that housing’s vital contribution is recognised and valued; and to secure the policy and resources necessary to make rebalancing a reality for people and places across the North.’

Within this objective we cover six ambitions which ensures housing is put at the heart of the governments rebalancing agenda.

 

Ambition 1: Ensure that the contributions NHC members make to a range of ‘levelling-up’ missions, particularly to employment and health, are recognised.

As part of the governments levelling up agenda there are four missions:

• Boost productivity, pay, jobs and living standards by growing the private sector, especially in those places where they are lagging;
• Spread opportunities and improve public services, especially in those places where they are weakest;
• Restore a sense of community, local pride and belonging, especially in those places where they have been lost; and
• Empower local leaders and communities, especially in those places lacking local agency.

We will map activity against the levelling-up missions ensuring our member contributions are recognised, particularly in the area of employment and health. We’ll kick this off at our Levelling Up Conference: Housing at the Heart of a Rebalanced Country which takes place on 14th July in Leeds. We’ll be bringing together key stakeholders to define the debate on how best to achieve place-based regeneration. We will discuss and share knowledge, and good practice in place-based working and develop the frameworks needed to maximise housing’s role in partnership with others. Our aim is to build an understanding of the contribution housing providers can make to the rebalancing agenda. Through this we can ensure that the great work of our members is recognised. Book your free place at the conference here.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Housing in the North have decided to use their meetings in 2022/23 to consider the role of housing in levelling-up. The NHC, as secretariat to the APPG, will be working with the Group’s officers to facilitate this. Look out for updates on our website.

Any member organisations who are running projects which deliver against the missions of the Levelling Up White Paper, particularly on the Missions related to health, wellbeing, employment and pride of place are invited to get in touch to share the details with the NHC.

 

Ambition 2: Continue to make the case that greater capacity is required in northern local authorities if we are to make rebalancing a reality.

The average net spend on housing in Northern councils has fallen by 54% since 2010/11, impacting on housing strategy, private sector housing renewal, homelessness and housing advice, and housing-related support services. The average net spend on planning in Northern councils has fallen by 65% since 2010/11, and this has impacted the development of local plans, planning policy, development and building control, environmental initiatives, and business, economic and community development activity.

We will continue to evidence current housing and planning capacity through this year’s Northern Housing Monitor – our ‘state of the region’ report for housing in the North.  We will evidence as far as possible the current level of capacity in housing and planning teams, and we’ll collect evidence on the roles required in housing and planning to deliver new services.

One of the opportunities to boost capacity includes the Public Practice model. Public Practice is a social enterprise with a mission to build the public sector’s capacity to improve the quality, equality and sustainability of places. The model brings diverse skills from the private sector through its Associate Placement Programme to attract, talented, motivated and experienced built environment practitioners – Associates – who want to work within the public sector.  The NHC championed their programme earlier this year and were delighted they have chosen to expand services into the North.

For the planning aspects of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, we will hold a consultation event on the aspects that the government will be consulting on including the proposed infrastructure levy. This will be a similar format to the consultation event held on the Planning for the Future White Paper in October 2020 working with supporter member Ward Hadaway.

 

Ambition 3: Contribute to the development and delivery of an updated Decent Homes Standard; improving housing quality across the North.

We plan to build on our compelling and robust evidence base on the quality of the North’s existing homes, ensuring that the Levelling-Up White Paper’s mission to improve housing quality results in a sustained focus on the North of England.

We will continue to contribute to the DLUHC Decent Homes Review Sounding Board, contributing member views and ensuring that the Standard is ambitious and deliverable. We’ve worked as part of the sounding board for the past year and we’re nearing the end of the process now. We advised on a range of different criterion which varied from ventilation and electrical safety to more placemaking measures. DLUHC have changed the ambitions and scope of the programme, and in their latest update have grouped the Standard’s focus into three areas: thermostatic-mixer valves and windows; electrical safety, refuse management and water efficiency; and ventilation and home security.

There are also plans to design a standard which covers both socially rented and private rented homes.  The NHC will continue to monitor the development of the new standard as it relates to both tenures.

Our next edition of the Northern Housing Monitor will evidence current levels of decency and energy efficiency standards across tenures in Northern regions and will anticipate and highlight any gaps against possible future standards.

 

Ambition 4: Work with Government, Parliament and our members to drive up standards in the North’s private rented sector.

We will be monitoring and responding to the expected 2022 Renters Reform White Paper and subsequent legislation on behalf of and in consultation with our members. The proposals on renter’s reform include commitments to abolish so-called ‘no fault’ section 21 evictions and strengthen landlords’ rights of possession, delivering on the levelling up mission to halve the number of non-decent rented homes by 2030 and create a rental market that is fairer and more effective for tenants and landlords.

Our Private Rented Sector member network offers the opportunity for members to come together and discuss emerging themes and issues. The key themes emerging from the network in relation to renters’ reform include: the need for streamlined standards in relation to HHSRS and MEES; place-based issues about areas of low value where landlords can’t or won’t invest due to viability; and avoiding ‘two-tier’ regulation where some properties will be exempt from raising homes to a level of decency because sum of investment outweighs overall value of the property. We’ll continue to bring members together to discuss and debate these important issues over the coming year.

 

Ambition 5: Secure funding for brownfield renewal across the North – evidencing the need and celebrating success.

Using our connections with the Northern Combined Authorities, we will demonstrate the difference existing Brownfield Funding has made, celebrating success and making the case for further funding to existing Combined Authorities and to new Combined Authorities if and when these emerge. Our current priority is to support members where possible on operational issues with the current fund, and to celebrate the success and ensure more investment in brownfield renewal into the future.

 

Ambition 6: Raise awareness of solutions available to support members with their rebalancing objectives.

We’ll strive to support members with any challenges coming out of the Decent Homes Standard, ensuring our procurement solutions support members with their rebalancing objectives.

 

Making rebalancing a reality for people and places across the North

Created by our full staff team alongside our member-led Board, the corporate plan has been shaped by insight built through our member engagement opportunities, by looking ahead to future challenges and from our member perceptions research which took place last year.

Within this corporate plan objective we will strive to ensure the contribution housing and of our members is recognised and valued; and through our activity we’ll work to secure the policy and resources required to make rebalancing a reality for people and places across the North.

The Northern Housing Consortium’s Private Rented Sector Network met for the first time in 2022 this month, with plenty to discuss since the recent Queen’s Speech. The Network was established to offer NHC members working in or connected to private sector housing the space to network and share good practice from across the northern regions and is Chaired by Dr Julie Rugg who informs discussion based on her expertise researching the Private Rented Sector.

This first session was used to digest announcements made in the Queen’s Speech and arrange a work programme to ensure the northern voice is heard. Announced earlier in the month, the introduction of the Renter’s Reform Bill is intended to fulfil the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to abolish Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions; and to strengthen other grounds for possession, such as for rent arrears and anti-social behaviour. The Bill will also legislate for the extension of the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector (a Levelling Up White Paper commitment), introduce a new ‘property portal’ to give tenants performance information to hold their landlord to account and create an Ombudsman for private landlords.

Acknowledging the Network’s large, pan-northern membership, NHC members were joined by colleagues from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Private Rented Sector Division. Discussing their work in Standards and Enforcement, David Selby and Lisa Whiting, shared their desire to hear the views of NHC members on the expansion of the Decent Homes Standard into the PRS. In particular, as the standard is developed, the Department would be looking closely at what success would look like for colleagues in the implementation of the Standard, and how any issues in relation to costs could be navigated.

In a wide-ranging discussion, NHC members discussed with the Department the need to avoid the duplication and ‘layering on’ of regulation, and the need to ensure that the Decent Homes Standard in the PRS compliments developments in the review of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System and Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards. NHC members saw an opportunity to create a ‘streamlined’ standard that Landlords could easily understand and importantly avoid any discrepancies that hinder Local Authorities in their work.

Equally, colleagues discussed the need to ensure that any work to enforce the new Standard be properly resourced. With sufficient capacity, it was felt that members could undertake proactive work providing support and education to professional landlords whilst effectively tackling the activities of criminal landlords.

Attendees also warned against the creation of ‘two-tier’ regulation where landlords in low-value housing markets could cite viability in alluding their responsibility to invest in their properties. Overall, it was felt that the wider Levelling Up agenda provided an opportunity to think holistically about how NHC members support homes of all tenures in their communities; looking at housing quality alongside decarbonisation and wider place-making to create better homes and places.

Recording and notes from the NHC’s Private Rented Sector Network are available to all NHC members signed up to the PRS Network Mailing List. To join the mailing list, please email Kristina.dawson@nhc.org.uk.