The Week in Housing: temporary accommodation spend hits new high, ombudsman learnings and RSH update on small landlords
Good afternoon.
Concerns were raised from across the UK this week about the quality and use of temporary accommodation as spending in England reached a new high.
Councils in England spent a record £2.8bn on temporary accommodation last year, with the annual bill rising by 25% as the homelessness crisis deepens.
A major driver of this is the fact that the amount councils can claim back is currently capped to 90% of the Local Housing Allowance rates from 2011. It’s an issue that the government is being heavily lobbied to reform.
In Wales, a thinktank called on the country’s government to ban the use of properties with the worst safety hazards from being deemed suitable as temporary housing.
A separate issue with this type of housing was revealed in Scotland as homeless households were not offered temporary accommodation despite legal entitlement to it more than 16,000 times last year.
There were several regulatory interventions. The Housing Ombudsman shared severe maladministration casework from seven landlords and how they handled issues such as subsidence, adaptations and rent accounts.
The Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) latest quarterly survey of landlords’ financial health found that housing providers are spending heavily on existing stock but investment in new homes has fallen.
The RSH has also decided that small landlords will not have to submit data on tenant satisfaction measures after a pilot found it would create an “additional burden”.
Meanwhile, a council in Surrey was issued a consumer rating of C4 by the English regulator for “very serious failings”, including not having evidence it was working to deter and tackle hate incidents in the area.
One of the most-read stories of the week was Inside Housing’s reporting on how a consultancy for the Grenfell Tower refurbishment is countersuing the other companies involved in the £360m civil lawsuit brought forward by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
On the wider issue of building safety, Barratt Redrow’s building safety provision has topped £1bn during the last financial year due to issues found with reinforced concrete frame buildings.
Meanwhile, two blocks of flats in Croydon owned by housing association L&Q are to undergo “precautionary checks”, and one block owned by Croydon Council is also undergoing checks, after fire safety issues were uncovered in a tower on the same development.
An analysis of the £800m government scheme to decarbonise social homes revealed it has underperformed, with fewer than a third of targeted retrofits completed.
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