The Week in Housing: CMA probe and a new consumer inspection regime on the horizon

Good afternoon.

It’s been a week in which an investigation was launched into information-sharing between the UK’s major house builders, new research pointed out the economic case for social housing and the English regulator set out its expectations on consumer standards.

Jonathan Walters, deputy chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), told Inside Housing there were “too many landlords” with out-of-date stock information and that the majority will miss out on a top grade for the new consumer standards.

The first judgements under the regulator’s new inspection regime are expected this summer, but most landlords have some “distance to travel” to comply with the standards. “I think the sector has got a way to go to be quite honest,” Mr Walters stated.

His comments come as the RSH published a raft of documents confirming how the new regime will operate. Under the new post-Grenfell system, housing associations and councils will be inspected every four years over the newly revised consumer standards, which cover the condition of homes and how they treat tenants.

For house builders, the Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into the eight biggest firms after it found evidence that some developers may be sharing commercially sensitive information.

The competition watchdog will seek to determine whether the country’s largest house builders have broken the Competition Act 1998 by sharing information with their competitors to influence the build-out of sites and the price of new homes.

Barratt, Bellway, Berkeley, Bloor Homes, Persimmon, Redrow, Taylor Wimpey and Vistry will be subject to the investigation.

With that probe under way, new research reiterated why investing in social housing could add billions of pounds to the economy. Commissioned by Shelter and the National Housing Federation, the report found that investment?would generate ￡12bn profit to the taxpayer .

The research revealed that building 90,000 social homes per year would generate ￡51.2bn net (￡86.5bn gross) of economic and social benefits over 30 years. It also demonstrated that within three years, building the homes would break even and return ￡37.8bn back to the economy, largely by boosting the construction industry.

There was an?interesting High Court decision that confirmed an East Sussex council is able exclude people with disabilities that may contribute to anti-social behaviour (ASB) from social housing.

However, the court did acknowledge that there is very little publicly available evidence linking neuropsychiatric disabilities and housing-related ASB, and that no data has been collected by the government on this issue.

Concerns with building safety in the Olympic Village rumble on as?Newham Council issued an improvement notice to East Village Management Limited outlining the “necessary enhancements” needed to ensure a block in the complex meets current safety standards.

Inside Housing understands that the block in question, Titian Heights, is not covered by the first-tier tribunal ruling from January, which ordered Stratford Village Development Partnership and its?parent company Get Living to pay ￡18m to make five of the 66 blocks in East Village safe. Get Living has appealed this ruling.

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