An all-party committee of MPs has given councils a roasting over their performance as landlords.
The Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee says that while most social homes are decent places to live, too many tenants living in social housing suffer from appalling housing conditions.
On top of that, they do not have their complaints treated seriously.
The HCLG’s report notes that the minimum standard of what is considered a decent home has not changed in twenty years.
It says: “it is not acceptable that just under 430,000 social homes still fail to meet even this basic standard”.
The committee wants the government to deliver an approach which addresses the twin objectives of building more social homes while ensuring conditions in existing housing stock are improved.
The report recommends the government establishes a new, modern Decent Homes Programme to achieve the twin goals.
Committee chairperson Florence Eshalomi says: “Whether it is residents living in poorly insulated homes, experiencing overcrowding, or enduring housing with damp or mould, it’s vital that government measures, including Awaab’s Law and the New Decent Homes Standard, bring a meaningful improvement to social housing conditions.
“The government deserves credit for the steps taken to rebuild the sector’s financial capacity after years of underinvestment.
“However, we do have concerns about the resources available to social housing providers to meet the government’s new social homes target while also raising standards over the decade.”
The report agrees with the government’s decision to rollout Awaab’s Law in phases, focusing on tackling the most dangerous hazards first.
But it warns that social landlords and tenants need a much clearer roadmap for when the remaining phases of Awaab’s Law will be introduced.
The report calls on the government to urgently set and publish the timeline for extending Awaab’s Law to all remaining hazards, so that tenants and social landlords have clarity about when they can expect these new regulations to apply.
It adds that the government’s proposed changes to the Decent Homes Standard are welcomed, with the report noting that the “current standard has been out-of-date for some time and is in urgent need of reform, given that it was last updated in 2006”.
The report also calls on the government to introduce a review to update the Decent Homes Standard at least every 10 years.
This would ensure it “reflects the changing needs of the population, environmental pressures, scientific evidence of the hazards to health from poor housing and societal expectations of what a decent home consists of”.
This article is taken from Landlord Today