This post was originally written to share some of the lessons learned during a study visit by residents of Big Local areas to Leigh West to explore local strategies to improve housing. We are publishing it here partly because we think it might be of wider interest, but also because it is quite long. A shorter version will be published on the Local Trust web site. The study visit was organised by NANM as part of our support for networking and learning between Big Local areas. You can find out more about Big Local by visiting the Local Trust web site.
On the 24 and 25 February 2014, 13 people from six Big Local areas travelled to Leigh West to take part in the Improving housing – Big Local study visit. It was a fascinating visit during which we were shown around the local area by residents of Leigh West Big Local (Leigh Neighbours), heard from Wigan Housing Solutions, a local social enterprise lettings agency working in the area, as well as from Lancashire Community Finance about their approach to low cost home improvement finance, and North Huyton Communities Future about how they are using national Empty Homes funding to renovate empty homes to rent to families in need. We were also taken through the process of developing a neighbourhood plan by Urban Vision, an architecture and built environment centre, and heard from an architect at the URBED cooperative about a couple of community-led housing projects in Liverpool. You can see slides from most of the presentations on the NANM SlideShare site, along with some photos and video on the Local Trust Flickr and YouTube channels.
But what was really noticeable was how all of the areas present identified problems in the private rented sector as a barrier to improving housing in their communities. It is this common experience that I want to focus on in this blog post.
So what’s the problem?
For most of those on the visit the big problem was the impact that badly maintained privately rented properties and poorly managed tenancies were having on their area. They made the place look untidy, gave tenants no reason to care about, or put down roots in, the area and contributed to low perceptions and prices in the areas. For one of the areas the challenge was slightly different. Not so much problems with current private landlords but rather with how to ensure that redevelopment of their estate led to a mix of tenure opportunities for local people, that new properties didn’t just get snapped up by ‘buy to let’ landlords, leaving local people with fewer choices.
In this article I am going to focus on the first of these two problems: addressing standards in the existing private rented sector. But I will briefly return to the second problem, at the bottom of the page, as part of considering other opportunities for housing related networking and learning.
Who sets, and enforces, standards for privately rented homes?
I had hoped that this would be an easy section to research and write. How wrong!
First thing to say is that Britain has one of the least regulated private rented sectors in Europe1. All landlords are required by law to ensure their properties meet minimum health, safety and environmental standards (that there is an up to date gas safety certificate, electrical appliances are safe to use and that there is an energy performance certificate)2, but beyond that the assumption is that landlords and tenants will ‘work it out’. In most parts of the country landlords and their agents are not required to register with anyone, so much of the onus for checking that standards have been met falls to tenants. Similarly, if repairs or improvements to a rented property are needed, the assumption is that a tenant will simply contact their landlord who will respond. Shelter’s current campaign highlights why this may not work in practice.
Because of the increased risks involved there are now additional rules for landlords of Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMO), covering fire safety and minimum access to facilities. HMOs that have three or more storeys and are occupied by five or more persons forming two or more households are also required to be licensed.34
Local authorities do have powers to step in and require landlords to make improvements where a hazard has been identified, but something needs to trigger their interest. The Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), introduced by the Housing Act 2004 as a replacement for the Housing Fitness Standard, is a risk assessment tool to help with the assessment of health and safety risks in residential properties. It is designed to be used across all types of tenure: homeowners, social and privately rented homes. The HHSRS can be used by landlords and their agents to assess their own properties as well as by council staff investigating a complaint or other concern about a property. If the council does undertake an assessment and identifies one of the more serious categories of hazard they have a duty to ensure action is taken.567
The Housing Act 2004 also gave local housing authorities the power to make a special management order for a single property or introduce a licensing scheme for privately rented properties in a specified area (selective licensing) as a way to tackling problems in the local private rented sector, such as anti-social behaviour. For an example of a selective licensing scheme, see the one set up by Back on the Map in partnership with Sunderland City Council to improve living conditions for private sector tenants and the wider community in Hendon.
All in all, it is a bit of a confusing landscape, and one that relies heavily on tenants knowing their rights and feeling confident to use them. A lot of the problem is probably down to the speed at which the private rented sector has grown. There are now about 4 million private renters in England. That is 18% of households, up from around 10% throughout the 1980s and 1990s. That means that the private rented sector has overtaken social renters in size (at about 3.7 million, 17% of households)8. To look on the bright side, the Coalition Government and main political parties are all looking at ways to make the private rented sector work better. See ‘Riding the zeitgeist’ below for a bit more on this.
How can Big Local areas support and encourage improvement?
Partly because of this confusing picture, it is tempting to dismiss renting and housing as just being too big for Big Local. But one of the lessons from the Improving housing study visit is that there are things that Big Local partnerships can do, and are doing, to influence the quality of the private rented sector in their area.
Here are a few approaches that came up during the visit:
Building an evidence base and using your local knowledge: Big Local partnerships already collect a lot of information about their neighbourhood as part of developing the Big Local profile, vision and plan. This can be really useful when grounding conversations about the private rented sector. For example, in Leigh West there was a local rumour that there were a couple of ‘Mr or Ms Bigs’ that owned most of the privately rented property. Leigh Neighbours knew from the information collected for the Big Local plan that this was not the case. A more accurate picture was of a larger number of small landlords, with one or a few properties, who’d perhaps bought them as a pension plan and hadn’t completely thought through their responsibilities as a landlord. This knowledge has influenced the way Leigh Neighbours is working with the council, Wigan Housing Solutions and Lancashire Community Finance.
Making friends with the local authority (and perhaps also your MP): Whether or not they like it, the local authority will play an important role in helping you improve standards in the local private rented sector. They have access to information, some powers to take action (whether or not they choose to use them) and, sometimes, access to funding. When Leigh Neighbours spoke to Wigan Council about their desire to get some of the empty properties in their community back into use they discovered that the council already had some funding allocated for empty homes that they were happy to involve Leigh Neighbours in developing a plan to use.
Working with, and encouraging, the reputable letting agents: Wigan Housing Solutions is a good example of a letting agency committed to doing its bit to improve the local private rented sector. It is a Community Interest Company which at the same time as delivering a commercial lettings service also achieves a number of social goals. In particular, one of the things that Wigan Housing Solutions does is to actively work with both landlord and tenants to ensure they understand and fulfil their responsibilities to one another. One of the results is tenants that stay longer, who feel rooted. This is the opposite of the business model of the less scrupulous letting agents who rely on a high churn of short tenancies to generate income from the various fees they charge of both landlord and tenant at changeover.
Helping owners and landlords access affordable finance for improvements: If a landlord does decide to upgrade their property, one of the problems that they might encounter is financing the improvements. Leigh Neighbours are working with a local credit union and Lancashire Community Finance to develop low cost home improvement loans of different sizes, which will be available to home owners as well as landlords. That is in addition to funding via the council to help owners of empty properties bring them back into use as homes.
Getting directly involved in creating better housing options: Some Big Local partnerships are considering going a step further and actually planning and providing local housing themselves, whether by buying and renovating empty homes, creating a community land trust or using their community rights or neighbourhood plan to champion community-led housing projects.
Riding the zeitgeist: improving regulation of privately rented homes
Another reason that this might be a good time to be taking an interest in ways to improve standards in the private rented sector is that it is becoming an increasingly hot topic. As previously mentioned, the private rented sector is already bigger than the social housing sector. There has been considerable coverage in the media of the rising cost of renting, particularly in London, and the range of charges that some lettings agents charge people starting a new rental. Shelter has launched its ‘Fixing private renting’ campaign, which highlights how some landlords are evicting tenants who complain about standards and last year’s investigation of the private rented sector by the Communities and Local Government select committee concluded that ‘The market is a developing one which we need to help edge its way towards maturity.’910
Finally, research by Generation Rent (formerly the National Private Tenants Organisation) suggests that the number of people who now rent privately makes the needs of private tenants something that the major political parties need to consider in developing policies for the next general election.11
Interesting topic? More networking & learning around housing
You’ll have probably gathered, I think this a fascinating and important subject (if at times a little daunting). This is a far bigger topic than can be covered in a single blog post. Plus, I am sure, there are people across Big Local with much more knowledge and experience than me. If housing and renting continues to be a topic that interests people in Big Local areas, NANM and Local Trust would be keen to organise further opportunities for networking and learning around the issues. In the meantime, if you have any questions or examples of good practice to share do drop us a line or add a comment below.
Paul Ducker
National Association for Neighbourhood Management
16 April 2014
All that is Solid: The Great Housing Disaster, Danny Dorling 2014 ↩
Private Renting on GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk/private-renting [Accessed 15 April 2014] ↩
Licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation in England: A guide for tenants https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/licensing-of-houses-in-multiple-occupation-in-england-a-guide-for-tenants [Accessed 15 April 2014] ↩
Red Tape Challenge – Private Rented Sector http://www.redtapechallenge.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/private-rented-sector/ [Accessed 15 April 2014] ↩
English Housing Survey: Headline Report 2012 -13
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284648/English_Housing_Survey_Headline_Report_2012-13.pdf [Accessed 16 April 2014] ↩Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHRS) – Commons Library Standard Note http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN01917/the-housing-health-and-safety-rating-system-hhsrs [Accessed 15 April 2014] ↩
Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHRS) – Medway Council information sheet http://www.medway.gov.uk/housing/councilhousing/housinghealthandsafety.aspx [Accessed 15 April 2014] ↩
English Housing Survey: Headline Report 2012 -13
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284648/English_Housing_Survey_Headline_Report_2012-13.pdf [Accessed 16 April 2014] ↩Communities and Local Government Committee – Inquiry into the private rented housing sector, Published 18 July 2013
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/communities-and-local-government-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/private-rented-sector/ [Accessed 16 April 2014] ↩http://www.parliament.uk/topics/Private-rented-housing.htm ↩
Generation rent: housing policy could swing the vote in 2015 election, The Guardian 29 March 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/29/general-election-could-hang-on-how-private-tenants-vote [Accessed 16 April 2014] ↩
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