Halfway decent

Earlier this month deputy prime minister John Prescott visited tenants to celebrate the government's success in improving the homes of more than one million people. But back at the office, his statisticians must have been biting their nails, for the celebrations may have been a mite premature.

Prescott was celebrating government figures that show councils are now almost halfway to meeting the 2010 decent homes target, a minimum quality standard for all social housing that was set in 2000.

In 1997, roughly 2.1 million homes fell below it; that figure now stands at 1.1 million. Yet there are growing worries that councils will fail to meet the 2010 deadline for bringing all their stock up to the target.

Five of the eight core cities say that the greater part of their stock has still to be brought up to standard (see "Are we there yet?", opposite). Many London boroughs are in a similar position and last week the ODPM's select committee on decent homes reported that "discrepancies" in ODPM data have made it "impossible to assess whether the department is on course to deliver any of its key targets". The committee is "concerned that the yearly rate of improvement is not rising fast enough", although that hasn't stopped it backing the introduction of an even tougher standard.

Councils know they must dramatically increase the pace at which they improve properties if they are to stand any chance of meeting the 2010 deadline, but a combination of bureacracy and the fact that many are leaving their worst stock until last means it is unlikely progress will speed up.

Add to this with the expectation – one shared by the ODPM – that the cost per unit of meeting the standard will rise in real terms over the next seven years, and it's clear the programme is heading for trouble.

Birmingham is a case in point. The council faces acute difficulties: at present 49,766 of its homes – that's 63% of the total number – are below the standard and it faces a £165m funding gap if it is to improve them by 2010.

  "On current levels of funding, 8063 homes will still be non-decent by 2010 and those will be our very worst properties," says Michael Irvine, Birmingham council's interim director of housing.

Sarah Webb, the Chartered Institute of Housing's director of policy, says: "The biggest risk lies with local authorities that have significant numbers of non-decent housing." She sees the "artificial" standard as something of a distraction and feels that by obsessing about number, both the government and councils risk overlooking the question of sustainability.

Some councils, Webb believes, will run short of time because they are forced to do extensive stock options appraisals exploring different ways they might reach the standard. "Assuming Birmingham manages to begin implementing its stock options appraisal by 2006, it will have only four years to do all the work," she points out.

Many others agree that the government's insistence on appraisals is a hindrance to the work of actually improving homes, especially for those with the most ground to make up. Hitches with Manchester's appraisal, for example, meant it had to delay its place on the fourth funding round for arm's-length management organisations, which is vital if it is to stand a hope of meeting the target.

Manchester council's director of housing, Steve Rumbelow, insists the place on the ALMO list is guaranteed and that the delay won't effect the council's strategy for meeting the goal. But he admits that getting more than half the city's 50,000 homes up to the standard by 2010 leaves no leeway. And as Manchester's strategy is a combination of stock transfer, PFI and ALMO, the potential for delay is dangerously high.

"If any of the programmes slips, it will have an impact on whether we can meet the standard," says Rumbelow.

Sheffield's plans, too, rest on a knife-edge. The funding the council will receive through its third- and fourth-round ALMO will give it £750m to spend on decent homes – £250m short of the amount needed. As a result, the council is crossing its fingers for a fifth round of ALMOs. Provided there is one – and that's far from a given – close to £1bn will have to be spent in little more than five years.

"It's a huge amount of work to deliver in such a short time," says Karl Tupling, head of housing strategy at Sheffield. "That's why we've worked to get strategic partnerships in place as early as possible. Councils that haven't lined up industry to help them deliver will find it difficult and costly."

The unbending nature of the standard has caused some councils to consider drastic action as part of their strategy. Bristol, the best positioned of the core city councils in terms of decent homes, expects to be able to meet the target for all its properties bar 900, some of which are prefabs. But unless it deals with these, it won't reach the target.

"To replace the 300 prefabs would require £26m," says Ian Crawley, head of neighbourhood and housing services. "Instead we've decided to give the land for free to a developer who can build new homes for public and private use."

Many other councils will not have that freedom, however. In London's Camden, for example, no amount of creative demolition will give it enough money to meet the target. When its tenants rejected plans for an ALMO in January, they effectively denied the council any access to additional funding.

The irony is that if the council fails to meet the target it will, technically, mean the government fails, too. According to the select committee, and many councils, this means the government should recognise that where councils are unable to meet the target, alternative funding should be made available that allows them to meet the standard while retaining ownership of their homes.

There are other obstacles, too. Most non-decent social housing belongs to councils, but registered social landlords are also expected to meet the deadline. The Peabody Trust, for instance, recently revealed that 40% of its 19,500 homes were non-decent. It has had to cut back drastically on its development plans in order to find the £156m it needs to invest. In all, the 2001 English Housing Survey estimated that around 380,000 homes owned by RSLs failed the standard, and the Housing Corporation is keeping tabs on 84 housing associations it feels are at risk of missing the target.

On top of all this comes the spectre of an even tougher standard. Changes to the housing health and safety rating system, a set of prerequisites that housing must satisfy to be able to qualify as decent, are expected to increase the number of non-compliant homes in both council and RSL hands by roughly 20,000. The changes are being made through the Housing Bill, which comes into effect in 2005. Housing minister Keith Hill has indicated there will be no extra money to deal with the new benchmark.

In light of the above, it may seem absurd that many housing organisations and the ODPM select committee back a more ambitious standard. If the government stands so little chance of meeting the current standard, what is the likelihood with a more stringent one?

Whether or not the "decent homes plus" standard sees the light of day, one thing is clear: come 2010, the struggle for decent homes will be far from over.