Whistle stop from Birmingham NHF housing summit

Firstly, thank you and good bye Birmingham!

This was my first time at the Housing Summit. For those of you who haven’t been, it has a very different feel from the CIH conference. This has a calmer, slightly more serious feel to it. I found it great to get up to speed a bit more about the politics of housing (and it’s a minefield, especially with the upcoming elections and the uncertainty that that brings), and how important it is that we as a sector actively work with politicians and collectively to achieve the change that is so very much needed for us to remain viable as a sector and sort out the housing crisis.

As I slowly trundle back on the train to London, I will share some nuggets.

What are some of the challenges facing us?

• A housing crisis. The worst we have seen in our lifetime.
• Unaffordable housing across tenures. In Greenwhich council alone 200 families per week is reporting as homeless, the majority of them leaving market rent properties.
• Record high numbers of children are now living in temporary accommodations such as hotels and BnBs. LinkedIn has been awash with numbers this week on this.
• There is a general election looming. We need a long term plan for housing. And we need to liberate planning.
• What will the rent settlement be, but more importantly, how do we get rent reform from very complicated rent formulas and inequity between customers living in the same building?
• Sustainability of our sector.

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Some radical change is needed.

Both the Conservatives and Labour have been clear, they will not be spending more.

So that is some of the political landscape painted. I have to admit the picture is looking a bit awash with some dark tones.

I found the panel discussion on the “big picture towards the general election” very thought provoking. I am a bit bias as I had been star struck by Alistair Campbell (confession: I am a massive The Rest is Politics podcast fan. I did contemplate for a moment running onto the stage, but not having his latest book handy for signing, I restrained myself.)

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He challenged this sector by saying,

“We are still talking about the Cathy Come Home film as a defining film when we have a crisis right now”.

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The panel agreed the political debate on on housing is, at times, still stuck in “Maggie has sold off the council stock” terms. Politicians need to move on from that conversation.

Isabelle Hartman from The Spectator asked as WHO we are as a sector?

Are we corporate bodies or are we campaign driven organisations?

That question has been niggling away at me since. I heard from Jonathan Walters, from the Regulator of Social Housing, separately the extent to which there is misconception in Whitehall (the civil service) about housing associations. Things that the regulator has not found any evidence of in their work in regulating our sector.

We really need to think about how we can get all politicians to care about housing to drive housing to the top of the agenda for both Labour and Conservatives.

I also attended a workshop around “Knowing your homes” – a spin off piece of work from the Better Social Housing Review. What an interesting conversation, and one I will speak about at the National Housing Federation Asset Management conference in October.

But in the main: Decent Homes 2 consultation is coming later in the year. Get ready. Draft asset management indicators as per the BSHR should also be landing toward calendar year end for finalisation by April next year.

Are you asking yourself these important questions when it comes to knowing your homes:

Do you know who your silent tenants are?

Is a stock condition survey (or as I prefer a home condition survey) once every 5 years going to cut it? (I can tell you now, it won't.)

How do we fill that data gap? How do we build it into our operating models?

Where are we with our data? (Let’s be honest about this one, most of us is still at the early stages of that journey. If you haven’t invested in a data resource/ team yet – do not wait).

Have you overlaid customer and homes data and started using the insights to drive how you operate and support customers??

On a separate but linked topic I heard from the Chair (well new chair!) of Rochdale Borough Housing about

How do you know what you don’t know?

Read that again. How do you know what you don’t know? A real causer of sleepless nights that one is. He shared the changes that has been happening at RBH. They have implemented a range of actions starting with suspending their development programme to focus on tenant services and scrutiny, stock condition surveys, establishing which properties had specifically D&M (22% from their surveys so far) to board members speaking to tenants, walking estates and speaking to customer facing colleagues to triangulate.

Ultimately is has been a change of culture needed: in their case, a culture of listening and collaboration.

I have also seen both the current housing minister and the shadow housing minister speak. What a lesson in media training (or lack of!), human behaviour, knowing and not knowing their stuff, dealing with tricky interviewers. Two very different people. I fully appreciate that it is very different being the incumbent minister (Rachel Maclean) vs the opposition minister (Matthew Pennycook). What I can say is it would be just wonderful if we had – for a change – a housing minister who stuck around for a couple of years rather than months...

Some of Labour’s proposals for social housing that Matthew Pennycook shared are:

• Improve effectiveness of grant funding.
• Overriding objective of an affordable grant funding programme: provide genuinely affordable housing.
• Redirecting the affordable rent programme to social housing.
• Abolish the extension of right to buy to housing associations and reducing big discounts on right to buy.

He was clear. Reform is needed as there won’t be lots of funding available.

Next important stop: poverty and equality. Some very important sessions about our role in tackling this. And when we talk about equality, we mean for both customers and colleagues.

I am going to take one of the great ideas I heard today and pledge to do this:

I am going to take on a junior BAME colleague to show me life through their eyes and their work experience. I am going to ask that person to be my mentor.         

That will be one of my key commitments from this summit.

Further sessions touched on whether the government know the community investment, social and natural value (that was the first I heard of natural value, one to research a bit) that housing associations bring to the table?

Ryan Shorthouse (Bright Blue) made a statement that really resonated with me:

“Housing Associations are often the anchor institutions in left behind communities. The government need to recognise this."

The final update for me was about the rent settlement from 2025 onwards. There is so much to say on this topic, but I’ll try and keep it short. Radical change is needed for a few different reasons:

1. the current rent formulas are too complicated, and
2. what should rent levels be (including what rent is for)?

It is very complex and almost sounds like a prickly pear that no one is willing to peel. The government has so many conflicting interest on this: treasury wants to generate housing supply, the DWP wants to keep the benefits bill low, and DLUC sits somewhere in the middle.

We need to start work now to influence the future for a more radical change knowing it won’t come off until 2030 as the next settlement is just to close now for significant change.

The NHF will be asking for the following on behalf of its members:

CPI plus 1%

Reintroduction of convergence (a catchup basically of when we lost out on rent increase)

Long term settlement of 10 years

Ceiling and floors to build some protection for landlords and tenants.

And that is it.        

Birmingham is now truly several miles away and this article is perhaps a bit longer than your regular whistle stop tour (sorry for another train pun) but there is a lot to reflect on. All of this must lead to action for me, otherwise it would just be an opportunity to see one of my podcast heroes.

In the words of Alistair Campbell then,

"You have much more power as a sector than you realise."

Let’s tackle these thorny issues together comrades. Thank you to the Federation for pulling a really great conference together and Kate Henderson doing a fantastic job to bring us together as a sector.

And PS, before it all gets too serious, we did make it outside of the ICC and saw the canals.

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