Contribution
My Lords, my name is on Amendments 37, 38 and 44 in this group, all relating to the disposal of social housing to other buyers—which is quite separate from the right to buy for existing tenants, as they are sales to other purchasers. I have a good deal of sympathy with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey.
Amendment 37 is supported by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, and would require notification of the proposed sale, by a housing association selling social housing, to the regulator of social housing—as well as to the local authority, as is already in the Bill. Amendment 38 would require the notification to be submitted not four weeks in advance of a disposal, as the Bill specifies, but eight weeks in most areas and 12 weeks in a designated rural area, which I will come back to. I support Amendment 41 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, which he will explain in a moment. Finally, Amendment 44 in my name relates to adaptations made to properties that are going to be sold.
Disposals—sales to any buyer—of social housing have become a bone of contention in a number of places. They mean a loss of accommodation at social rents at a time when there is such a desperate shortage of affordable accommodation. Selling the family silver—even if it needs a good polish—is a short-term solution to the problem of social providers needing to balance the books. Some existing stock is in poor condition, requiring expensive repairs, while some is in places that are at an inconvenient distance from the organisation’s management and maintenance services. Sometimes the social landlord is simply taking the opportunity to sell valuable assets to fund development or major repairs elsewhere.
The Bill’s response to this phenomenon, which has become surprisingly extensive, is to require notification of the plan to sell to be given to the local authority and to local social housing providers. The housing association would be prevented from selling the home for four weeks after it had served notice of its intention. This is a very modest step to discourage loss of stock, which may then be acquired by less scrupulous landlords. Disposals are particularly undesirable where the same local authority may see the property relet by a private landlord at a much higher rent, not least as temporary accommodation. This is not good value for money.
The Chartered Institute of Housing makes the additional point that housing associations need to notify local authorities of a planned sale so that councils’ strategic plans for future development can be determined on the basis of what is happening to the existing stock. But the four-week notice period to be given of a sale presents a very tight timetable for local authorities to find another housing association to purchase the home, to do so themselves or to find funding for the same association to repair and improve the property it owns.
Amendment 37 would require notification to the social housing regulator, as well as to the local authorities, and would enable the social housing regulator to keep a record of what is going on, assess the impact and decide whether changes in its own policy are worth while. The housing associations are complaining that the reason they need to sell property that would otherwise have a decent life is that the regulator is imposing upon them all kinds of additional burdens that they then have to fund: regulatory measures, minimum energy-efficiency standards, building safety costs following the ghastly Grenfell Tower tragedy, and Awaab’s law where housing associations must now complete works on cold and mould in fixed timescales. All these measures are requiring and pressurising housing associations to spend more on their existing stock of property, and that is given as a reason for needing to sell to make up the balances they need. Notifying the social housing regulator is important in informing the regulator of what these pressures mean in real life to the housing associations.