Stirring up apathy: construction standards for affordable housing grants

Given the scale, national importance and deadline of the 2012 Olympics, the government felt bound to set detailed standards for the construction process. Then, in 2008, the Housing Corporation (now the Homes and Communities Agency) announced it was replacing its Construction Clients’ Charter with these standards and that recipients of funding from the National Affordable Housing Programme 2008-2011 must sign up to them. So why, a year down the line, have so few of the potential beneficiaries done so?

One obvious answer is that with the difficulties in obtaining private finance to match the grant, fewer organisations are bidding for the money. Equally, because the HCA has brought funding forward, there will be fewer bidding in future too. Another key reason lies in the standards themselves. They aim to reduce bureaucracy, focus on best practice and encourage signatories to:

• Implement a successful procurement policy and encourage an integrated project team
• Provide clear leadership and direction
• Adopt principles to ensure quality in design
• Foster a commitment to valuing people
• Apply sustainable approaches
• Implement health and safety procedures.

In short, they do not affect what is built, nor even, in a technical sense, how it is built but rather how all parties approach the process of procurement and delivery. This is not to criticise: the quality-driven, non-adversarial approach the standards promote does improve quality, efficiency and, yes, value for money; but it remains inevitable that when survival is the issue, the niceties of process will not always be a high priority.

Among those who considered the Clients’ Charter onerous, many assume the standards will be equally demanding, while others who do look at the standards find much that they are already doing. Both conclusions do little to motivate participation. What’s more, the HCA has announced it is working on new quality and design standards, leading to further uncertainty over the 2012 standards.

So, unless an organisation is applying for specific funding, the standards offer no apparent carrot, nor do they appear to wield a particularly big stick. There will be spot checks to see whether funded bodies are conforming to the standards and those who break them could lose their grant. But so far no offenders have lost cash or been “named and shamed”, so few organisations know what punishment they face for breaking the rules.

Shelagh Grant, chief executive of the Housing Forum, says: “Our cross-industry surveys provide a clear picture of how housing organisations believe they are doing in relation to each of the six commitments in the standards. In only two instances do a majority of respondents believe they are on top of the commitment – valuing people (80%) and health and safety (84%). With the other four, most state they have some way to go: procurement and integration (54%); quality in design (58%); leadership and direction (62%); and, most telling of all, sustainability (78%).

She says: “Clearly, the standards have much to offer but their purpose needs to be clearly defined for the housing sector. Special encouragement may be needed to turn the sector’s undoubted awareness of the sustainability agenda into action.”

Chris Moquet is new initiatives partner at Calfordseaden