Her majesty's measures

Draft Housing Bill - John Perry, Policy director, Chartered Institute of Housing

• Controls on houses in multiple occupation, including a licensing scheme to target “rogue” landlords and their antisocial tenants
  
• House sales: Vendors will have to prepare “seller’s packs” showing the condition of the property. The aim of the packs is to speed up the sales process and so prevent “gazumping”
  
• Draft bill expected to be published by February followed by three-month consultation.

The positive side of the government’s promise of a housing bill is that there will be time to consider the proposals and argue for the inclusion of any measures it misses. The downside is, of course, that legislation might not make it through the new parliamentary session, further delaying reforms that have been sitting in the wings since the 1997 election manifesto. As well as dealing with multi-occupation, the bill will introduce selective licensing in low-demand areas. The present fitness standard for older housing will be replaced by a sliding scale – a sensible reform but one which should not be used to hide statistical evidence of whether unfitness is increasing or declining. The other high-profile private sector measure is sellers’ packs for house sales. These could help to drive home the message about tackling disrepair and poor energy efficiency in older property. The bill will also provide the legislative framework for the single housing inspectorate – but should not delay the planned April start. It is unclear whether the Chartered Institute of Housing/Local Government Association campaign for stronger powers and duties relating to housing strategies will be in the bill. Nothing has yet appeared on the right to buy but the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is more likely to act quickly through regulation than await legislation that would simply encourage a rush of sales.

Antisocial Behaviour Bill - John Collinge, Chief executive, Medina Housing Association, Isle of Wight

• A white paper this year will be followed by a bill in mid-February
  
• Measures to make it easier to evict antisocial tenants
  
• Expands plans to impose fixed-penalty fines for antisocial behaviour offences
  
• An antisocial behaviour unit to be set up.

We were encouraged to hear the extensive measures in the Queen’s Speech to deal with antisocial behaviour – in particular the intention to make evictions easier. We support any reasonable measure that will result in our tenants not having to suffer the most severe antisocial behaviour. We have been openly critical of the misery caused by a painfully slow and weak legal process that leaves victims helpless and distraught. The ineffectiveness of the system encourages bad behaviour. If these measures are successful it should result in witnesses feeling it is worthwhile to give evidence, the courts will make more consistent judgments and registered social landlords will be more enthusiastic about implementing government policy. Our main concern remains the ability of the court to deal with the impact of antisocial behaviour measures. If the courts cannot deal with the volume of hearings now, how will they manage when these measures come in? Resources are also critical. We have spent £65,000 since April on antisocial behaviour legal action. If the measures are to be effective, it is essential that funding is available to make sure the help arrives for more people who are suffering so badly. Although no specific mention was made of the proposal to dock housing benefit from antisocial tenants, it does seem likely this will come forward with government backing. Housing practitioners should pay close attention to the precise way in which it is included in the antisocial behaviour bill.

Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill - Richard Bate, Partner at planning consultant, Green Balance

• Regional planning strategies will replace regional planning guidance
  
• County council structure plans will be scrapped as the planning development system is reduced to three tiers: national, regional and local
  
• Business planning zones system extended to promote development in deprived areas.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Bill is the first major planning legislation for nearly 12 years. It will give effect to those proposals in the planning green paper in December 2001, and “daughter”’ documents, which have survived public consultation. Broadly, the legislation can be expected to follow what the deputy prime minister said in his announcement to parliament on 18 July. The legislation is designed to slim down the planning process, to speed it up, and to improve the integration of land-use planning with the forward planning of other major areas of public life such as education, health and economic development. The bill also creates the opportunity for everyone with an interest in planning to promote their own changes to the law. It’s worth noting, however, that initiatives intended to have a direct affect on the supply of affordable housing are likely to appear through policy changes to the planning system, rather than the provisions of this bill. The government is increasing the emphasis on the regional level of planning, putting this on a statutory basis for the first time. New regional spatial strategies will replace regional planning guidance. With national, regional (enhanced) and local levels of planning, the government argues, there is no longer space for county planning, so structure plans will be abolished. Watch this space as subregional planning emerges to fill the gap. Local development frameworks will replace both local plans and unitary development plans. The idea is to link these more closely with the new community strategies prepared by district and borough councils, and to curtail the lengthy local policies which have often been produced over the past 10 years. The most controversial proposal is likely to be for the extension of business planning zones, areas in which development satisfying predetermined local criteria and design standards is allowed automatically. Originally intended to help high-tech companies respond quickly in fast-changing markets, the option is now likely to be offered to the 2000 wards in England experiencing greatest poverty. This assumes that planning is impeding development in areas most needing investment, for which there is no substantive evidence. Arrangements to make the compulsory purchase system faster and fairer will also appear, after years of debate, hopefully providing a leg-up to urban regeneration. Planning may be given a statutory purchase for the first time, if the wordsmiths can find something that is neither so generalised as to be meaningless nor so focused as to constrain its activities and evolution. But isn’t planning largely a brokering mechanism so that people with differing views can learn to live with difficult land-use decisions?

Local Government Bill - Steve Wilcox, Professor of housing policy, York University

• Councils to be given the power to borrow capital within prudent limits
  
• Likely to bring an end to the practice of council’s meeting housing benefit costs from rent income as rent rebates will be taken from the housing revenue account and placed in the general fund.

The Queen’s Speech brought a step closer the potentially radical reforms to the system that regulates council housing investment in England and Wales. The consultation period on the reform of the current council housing capital finance has ended, but as yet we’re not clear on the detailed proposals. Unlike many consultation exercises, which are more like short periods of grace before the government of the day proceeds with its proposals more or less regardless, the capital finance consultation paper set out some radical options for reform, rather than a single firm set of proposals. Once the ODPM’s deliberations are complete, some of the consultation paper proposals can proceed on the basis of existing powers, but the main reform of the capital control system must await the new legislation. The “abolition” of capital controls, with councils free to borrow subject only to “prudential borrowing” rules designed to ensure that councils do now borrow beyond their means, is a real prospect. But in the context of the tight subsidy system for council housing in England and Wales, this reform is rather less radical than it sounds. At the moment, councils get additional subsidy to meet the debt charges arising from their permitted levels of new borrowing. Under the new system, the levels of subsidy they get will more or less determine the level of the borrowing they will be able to undertake under the prudential borrowing rules. The suggestion that the ODPM might restructure the debts of some councils – the “good” performers – in order to enable them to undertake the borrowing required to meet the decent homes standard is more interesting. This is similar to the approach already being adopted for arm’s-length management organisations. However welcome this approach may be, the bottom line is that it all still has to operate within the constraints of the government’s public expenditure plans. Council borrowing will still count against the ODPM budget, and against the measures of net public sector borrowing and debt that remain cornerstones of the chancellor’s approach to managing public expenditure. We have yet to learn how the ODPM is going to carve up the housing budget set by the 2002 spending review, but it has already been acknowledged that it is unlikely to meet its timetable for the decent homes standard. It’s time, perhaps, for the ODPM to remind the chancellor that he could release another £100bn for public investment and still be within his “prudential” limit for net public sector debt.